


Dreamwalking

by SeahorseWithLaptop



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Actor Do Kyungsoo | D.O, Angst, M/M, Model Kim Jongin | Kai, Romance, Slice of Life, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 15:46:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 61,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9190232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeahorseWithLaptop/pseuds/SeahorseWithLaptop
Summary: They didn't think they'd ever see each other again after that amazing one night stand. But something keeps bringing them together; maybe somewhere deep down, they know that they can only dispel the sinister forces surrounding them—and within them—together.





	1. Prologue: See You Never

For the first hour Kyungsoo could hardly believe the model was looking at him. He wasn’t used to parties like this—parties where he was an average of four inches shorter than everyone, where everything glittered or else it shimmered underneath dim lighting just bright enough to see through. The model was looking at him, though; there was no doubt about it. He recognized him from the occasional magazine cover he’d see in the green rooms for talk shows or in the bathrooms of his more fashionable friends. For this party, the tall boy had brown carefully styled hair and wore a blazer with a low-cut t-shirt that probably cost as much as everything Kyungsoo was wearing. Instead of nice pants, like Kyungsoo’s, he wore black skinny jeans, but still he somehow seemed to embody the elegance of the chandeliers and champagne at this party. Maybe it was the thin silver necklace, or the rings. Or the eyes.

He made his move when Insung went to get drinks and Kwangsoo was engaged in a conversation with a woman in a dress the same color as her skin with a big ruby pulsing on her chest. He was taller up close, and thin, and his skin glowed.

“Hello.”

“Hello.” Kyungsoo shot the model half a smile. “You are everything intimidating to me, did you know that?”

The model was surprised, and his eyes flew a little wide. He didn’t look so threatening like that. Kyungsoo would venture cute. “Intimidating, me? I’d take it as a complement from anybody but you. I hope I’m not unapproachable. Kim Jongin. I’m with CJ, their—”

“—modeling department, yeah. Jongin, it rings a bell.” It didn’t ring a bell. But it would in the future. “Do Kyungsoo.”

“I know.” Jongin’s smile was small, like he found Kyungsoo amusing.

“Of course you do.” Kyungsoo was still adjusting to everyone in the country—and perhaps beyond—knowing his name and being able to put his face to it. “Are you an avid follower of Sunshine, my Love too?”

“When I’m watching TV, and it’s on, I watch it.”

“A glowing endorsement. I’ll cherish it.”

“Really?” Jongin leaned forward on their table, his shirt draping downward so Kyungsoo could see his whole chest through the neck opening. “I do wonder how it must be to adjust to everything so fast. One second, you’re an untapped talent. The next, you’re... tapped.”

Kyungsoo swallowed. Jongin was wearing a hint of eyeliner, just enough to highlight the honey and depth in his eyes. It was hot in the ballroom—there were a lot of important people to invite—but Jongin’s body heat seemed especially potent. Kyungsoo took a drink of his champagne. “I do feel—uh—tapped. You hit the nail on the head. That’s it, tapped. Now I have to provide a constant stream of fascinating personality and charm to the common viewer.”

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that. You ooze gravitas without even trying.”

“Says you, I’m sure.” Kyungsoo was dubious.

“Says me, of course!” Jongin scrunched up his nose and was back to looking cute and Kyungsoo was confused by this dual personality individual. “You know, I’m not the common viewer. My say should count.” He pouted.

“Why should your say count more than the critics’?” Kyungsoo asked, a smile twitching on his lips. “Is smiling on the runway so difficult?”

Jongin’s soft smile faltered for a moment but was back in a flash. “Just because I’m more of a fan of you in person than you on screen. Do Kyungsoo in the flesh is an attractive notion to me.” Jongin raised a perfect eyebrow.

“You flatter me.”

“I can’t help it.”

“You’ve been staring at me.”

“I can’t help that, either. You caught my attention.”

“I can’t help that I walked in before Joongki.”

“That’s mean. You don’t do yourself enough credit.” He pouted again. Kyungsoo began to look around himself for help. He wasn’t sure how to handle this boy. He didn’t really want to stop talking to Jongin. He didn’t really want to stop looking at Jongin. But the back of his neck and the tips of his ears felt hot and the champagne fizzled on his tongue when he took a sip. He was out of his comfort zone. Then again—he’d been out of his comfort zone since the first episode aired.

“I don’t want to be mean, Jongin. Was there something you wanted?”

Jongin shrugged and took a sip of champagne, the glass digging into his lips.

“Well—tell me about modelling then. What’s that like?” Kyungsoo figured it would be easier to keep talking to Jongin than to start a new conversation with any of the other social climbers in the room. And Jongin didn’t seem particularly keen on getting his autograph.

There was only one thing Kyungsoo could ever want from Jongin. He knew he would only go for it if he were much more drunk. Jongin was probably just flattering him because he was the new flavor of the drama industry at the moment. Maybe he was fascinated. In any case, Kyungsoo wasn’t naive, nor was he oblivious. He appreciated the view under Jongin’s shirt.

“Let’s not talk about modelling. It really is just walking around and looking pretty. Is it harder to do an emotional scene when it’s really cold or really hot?”

Kyungsoo tilted his head at Jongin. The model looked a little self-conscious about the question, downing a quick swallow of champagne before waving a hand with slim fingers in front of him. “No, nevermind. Forget it. Look, do you want to get out of here? You can’t be having fun. Or—I mean, no offense—making connections. You’re the squad-having type.”

Kyungsoo’s jaw dropped. He closed it quickly, but he knew it was harder for him to keep his eyes from bugging out. “Are you serious?”

Jongin looked at him incredulously. “Yeah, of course I am. Do you think I shamelessly flirt with everyone I talk to at these parties? Maybe we should have a conversation about what models do.” He smirked.

“But—I—are you serious?”

“You already said that. It’s hard for me to tell whether you’re leaning towards yes or now here.” Jongin seemed bored. He had a hand in his pocket, over his phone, like he was suppressing the urge of an addict. “If it helps, you are really hot. You seem to know it on TV, I don’t see why you wouldn’t in real life.”

Kyungsoo ran a hand through his hair. “My manager is going to kill me.”

“That sounds like a yes.” Jongin’s eyes sparkled in triumph. Kyungsoo wanted to grumble at him, wanted to ask him who in their right mind would decline an offer like the one he’d just been presented, but he held his tongue. Wondered whether he should be embarrassed at how quickly Jongin had talked his way into his pants. Kyungsoo wasn’t even out.

Joongki stopped him on his way out, catching his arm with his hand. “Hey, there’s still an hour or two to the party, bro.”

“I’m gonna get going early. I don’t see what more it could do for me. I did the red carpet and everything, and all the introductions I was slated for.” He watched as Joongki rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, but I saw Kim Jongin leaving, too.” Joongki licked his lips, eyebrows knitting together a little.

Kyungsoo stiffened a little. “Yeah?”

“Well, just... look, I know he’s hot, but... trust me, before I met the guy I thought I was straight, is all I’ll say. Try not to fall in love, I guess.”

“Never said I was leaving with him.” Kyungsoo his a smile.

 Joongki smiled, but his smile looked a little tight—worried. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay? You can literally bang anybody at the end of the night. Or we could all go out for some soju to blow off steam.” It was tempting; they hadn’t all hung out as a group, off a set, in months. But Jongin’s hair glinted in the backseat of a taxi just out the doors of the venue and Kyungsoo felt like taking advantage of his new popularity, for once. If that’s what it was.

“Rain check,” he replied to Joongki, gently prying his arm away with an apologetic smile, and went to retrieve his coat. When he looked back, Joongki was still shooting him worried glances. But they’d always been the sort of friends who trusted each other as adults; Joongki wouldn’t tell Kyungsoo not to leave with Jongin unless it were dangerous, for some reason.

* * *

The back of the taxi smelled like cheap leather, but in the enclosed space Jongin’s cologne also wafted towards Kyungsoo, subtle and sophisticated. Jongin spent the cab ride reclining leonine against his side of the cab, long arms stretched over the back of the seat and across the door, legs casually sitting a little open. Kyungsoo sat on his side facing forward, legs crossed. The city was ablaze tonight with streetlights and breaklights and shiny highlighter reflecting the moon from women’s cheeks. Fur coats brushed against leather brushed against suede. When it wasn’t orange light, the city faded to blue then to darker blue, like a matte ocean.

Jongin didn’t try to strike up a conversation. When Kyungsoo finally thought to look over at him, recalling that sometimes cab rides were full of making out and grinding and other sexual endeavors, he found that Jongin was watching him with an open-eyed curiosity, like he had to memorize the lines of his face for a test the next morning. In the shadows of the cab, Kyungsoo felt sure this creature could be endlessly seductive; instead, he reminded Kyungsoo more of a pouty owl, and he seemed rather cold.

“Are you cold at all?”

“That’s alright. We’re almost there, aren’t we?”

“It’s just up here.”

“Okay. Sorry we couldn’t go to mine. I have roommates.” Jongin had already told him this, of course. They spoke to each other in the quiet tones of familiarity, even though they had no right to. Jongin’s voice was deep, but it was pure, emerging from the shadows alone. Kyungsoo shook his head; looked back at the city.

His apartment was messy and he hadn’t been expecting visitors. It was two rooms—the bedroom and the rest—but the rest had scripts and old DVD cases strewn all over the place. Otherwise Kyungsoo was pretty neat—at least there wasn’t underwear lying out in plain sight.

“Something to drink?”

“Water.”

“Water?” Kyungsoo turned back to Jongin incredulously as he padded into the kitchen. The model was leaning against the inside of the door, inspecting the interior with the clinical interest of the journalists Kyungsoo now had to deal with daily.

“It’s important to stay hydrated. Champagne does nothing for that. Just muddles the brain.”

Kyungsoo shrugged, wondering if this was a model thing, and poured himself a stiff glass of bourbon. “Whatever floats your boat, buddy.” He crossed the apartment, handing Jongin his glass and leaning his back against the cool wall next to Jongin.

“Well, that would be water, too. Floating my boat.” Jongin held his water glass away and turned, placing a hand next to Kyungsoo’s head and dipping his head between Kyungsoo’s mouth and his bourbon to capture his lips in a lingering, close-lipped kiss.. Then he pulled all the way away and took a cool sip of water. “Buddy.”

Kyungsoo blinked at him. “You’re very dangerous, aren’t you?” He murmured, tilting his head upwards so he could meet Jongin’s honey eyes. They were still that innocent wide brown.

Jongin’s face twitched again—the corner of his mouth pursed a little. “No, I’m not dangerous, Kyungsoo. Can I call you Kyungsoo? Or Hyung? Please don’t think I’m dangerous.” There was a sadness in his eyes. A mourning that looked deep.

“Okay,” Kyungsoo said without thinking. He took another sip of bourbon. HIs head was swimming now. “You’re not dangerous. I guess that’s just what people say about beautiful things. Really it’s me that’s dangerous around you, probably.”

Now Jongin smiled. Hesitantly. “That sounds more promising.” His voice was a low, honeyed rumble, and right in front of Kyungsoo he went from wide-eyed and harmless to hood-eyed and sensual. It seemed like he’d only tilted his head. He put his drink down and took Kyungsoo’s too. Then he stalked over to the bedroom door with fluid steps, his hips rolling like a cat’s, and stood against it. Looking at Kyungsoo.

“Is that something they teach all models?” Kyungsoo asked, throat tight and pants getting tight too.

“What, walking? Yes, duh. Come here.”

Kyungsoo hadn’t meant walking. He didn’t know what he’d meant. Maybe hypnotization. He walked across the apartment in a trance and placed his hands carefully on Jongin’s hips, realizing that Jongin had shed his blazer and now wore only his white t-shirt and jeans. In return,  Jongin’s arms snaked around his neck and then draped over his shoulders. They had a weight that felt perfectly balanced. Jongin leaned forward and kissed him, a press of lips, pulling back and pulling Kyungsoo’s lips with him so Kyungsoo was leaning forward, into Jongin, pressing on his hips. Their breaths were echoing in the apartment but Kyungsoo couldn’t put on sexy music gracefully. He preferred Jongin kissing him again, this time letting Kyungsoo lick into his mouth and press hot breath into him.

His body was hot and lithe against Kyungsoo’s, and he used it sparingly at first, preferring to explore Kyungsoo’s mouth. He seemed preoccupied with it. With Kyungsoo’s lips—sucking on them and massaging them and mixing their saliva. Kyungsoo was not one to argue. His hands had moved to Jongin’s ass and kneaded there every once and awhile when Jongin rolled his hips upward. Kyungsoo wanted to laugh because Jongin was so much taller than him that their crotches didn’t line up if they were standing. Jongin was kissing him with an advantage, hunched, and Kyungsoo’s head was tilted upwards. Jongin was winning the kiss, if it had been a battle, his tongue in residence in Kyungsoo’s mouth.

That was easily remedied. Kyungsoo opened the door behind Jongin and swept the model up bridal-style, to a shriek on Jongin’s part. When he looked down at Jongin’s face, though, it was bright and delighted. Kyungsoo deposited him on his neat queen bed, which dominated the small room and then crawled between Jongin’s legs, rekindling the kiss. This time, he had a better advantage, and Jongin rested his hands on Kyungsoo’s ass and his head on Kyungsoo’s pillow. He was lean but Kyungsoo felt muscles beneath his clothes, not starvation. He took off Jongin’s shirt. He was right. Jongin’s body glistened in the moonlight filtering into the bedroom from the window.

Jongin took off his shirt; Kyungsoo rolled off his jeans. They were each lost in the way this went, and in doing this with each other. It was easier, more natural, than it had ever been. And... hotter. Kyungsoo felt like he was burning up, and he was hard. Jongin found his lube in Kyungsoo’s side drawer, and was about to spread his legs, when Kyungsoo caught his wrist, panting.

“Wait.” Jongin looked up at him, lips red and glistening, a hickey blooming on his chest, moisture coalescing at his temple. Wide-eyed, waiting; confused.

“I...” Kyungsoo licked his lips, hovering above Jongin, eyes flickering sporadically from the boy’s flushed cock to his chest to his lips to the lube. “It’s been a while,” he explained, his voice rough. Jongin’s mouth popped open as he searched Kyungsoo’s face, confused. “I want...”

“Oh.” Jongin was suddenly smirking, holding the lube out of Kyungsoo’s reach. Then, in one graceful motion, he flipped them over, pushing one of Kyungsoo’s legs aside to fit himself between them. Then he hovered over Kyungsoo with dark eyes and pupils shot wide. “What is it you want, hyung?”

Kyungsoo opened his legs more and grinded upwards, so their unclothed cocks brushed each other. He was rewarded when Jongin clenched his jaw and gripped Kyungsoo’s hip with one hand, gaze sweeping over the actor’s body. “Oh no, you should really tell me.” His grin was devilish.

Kyungsoo glared at him, but it only seemed to delight Jongin more. The model lubed his fingers, rubbing them together, and then sat up on his knees, tracing light patterns on the insides of Kyungsoo’s thighs, waiting.

“I’d like you to fuck me, Jongin.” Kyungsoo tried to sound stern, but instead he sounded half exasperated, half strained, and his voice was deep and scratchy. Jongin grinned again and his mouth was on Kyungsoo’s again. Kyungsoo ate it up gratefully. Then his finger was at Kyungsoo’s hole and inside and Kyungsoo let a sigh escape his lips, ignoring the smile he felt on Jongin’s face as the boy kissed down his neck.

Jongin took his time, going to three fingers but making sure to never get Kyungsoo too worked up. But now they’d been kissing long enough that they’d learned each other, and they were only enjoying it more and more. It was the kissing that heightened it. Kissing and sucking dark marks on chests and saliva and tongue and sound and breath.

He moaned obscenely when Jongin finally rolled on a condom and pushed into him, stopping at full hilt and dropping his head into the crook of Kyungsoo’s neck. Jongin was hot and lithe and lean and long and everywhere. He clenched and relaxed and then Jongin was moving his hips with unbelievable fluidity and Kyungsoo was instinctively moving his hips up to meet Jongin’s thrusts.

They were both surprised by it; it was a surprised fucking that went more quickly than either of them thought it would or could stop. It felt too good. It was overwhelming and everywhere Jongin touched him was on fire. Kyungsoo came quickly, moaning Jongin’s name. Jongin followed not long after, and he was more incoherent.

It was surprise afterwards, too, Jongin lying on top of him a lethargic moment before pulling out and throwing out the condom. They had breaths to catch that were faster than they should have been. Kyungsoo took a shower that was hot but not as hot as Jongin’s skin was. When he got back the model was fast asleep, curled up in a muddle of blankets like they were a substitute for a person.  

* * *

It took Jongin a full minute to go into panic mode. He’d broken one of his rules. He never broke one of his rules. His rules were more there as theoreticals, vague boundaries that existed somewhere in the realm of possibility but would never, probably, happen.

He’d forgotten to set an alarm on his phone and he’d slept in. Late. So late, in fact, that it appeared his bed partner from last night had risen before him, and he was alone in a foreign bed. Warm, under fresh(ish) sheets. He tossed them off resentfully, quickly finding his clothing and pulling it on. He was about to pull the bedroom door open, hoping to everything that was holy that Kyungsoo had gone out, when the door opened inward and he jumped. The actor jumped, too, eyes bugging out of his face like saucers under his adorably mussed morning hair. Jongin could remember when his character changed it from brown to black on the show. He’d approved. This was much more Kyungsoo.

“In a rush?” That was Kyungsoo, the corners of his mouth tugging upward like something about Jongin amused him. Jongin clenched his jaw. Yes.

“Not at all.” He made it a policy to always be polite to them. Always leave it on good terms. He’d learned his lesson in that respect.

“Good. I have pancakes. And coffee.”

“You made pancakes?” Jongin was struck for a moment. The small actor turned back to him. He was in blue jeans that looked heavenly soft and a black cotton t-shirt. Also more Kyungsoo than the fashionable skinny jeans and colorful jackets he wore on his show.

“Yes.” Kyungsoo frowned. “So now you have to stay. I have this phantom worry that models don’t eat enough. Can’t begin to imagine where that one comes from.”

Jongin chuckled and followed Kyungsoo into the kitchen. “Actually, I’m naturally like this, besides the working out,” he said conversationally. Kyungsoo was actually very warm like this, away from the stiffness of the formal parties, and Jongin found he wanted to linger. His biggest rule: leave before they wake up.  So he was fucked anyway. Might as well get some pancakes on the way out.

He devoured them. Kyungsoo left him alone to go do something in his room and Jongin didn’t pry because he was polite and that was how it went. He kept track of the actor, though, and joined him on his small balcony when he was done with his pancakes, bringing his coffee with him to ward off the lingering chill of the morning.

“You were hungry,” Kyungsoo observed, watching him with a vaguely fond expression as he cradled his coffee mug.

Jongin flicked his eyes up towards Kyungsoo, smirking a little. “After last night? I have calories to make up for.” He was rewarded by the tips of Kyungsoo’s ears going a shade redder. Cheeks, too. Kyungsoo’s eyebrows furrowed.

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Go from one to the other like that. No offence, but you’re cute. But then, uh, scary... sexy.”

“Ah.” Jongin leaned forward on the iron railing, eyes scanning the city, following the ants or maybe they were people as they marched to work far below. “I’m innocent. I’m innocent, right? That’s my thing. I’m innocent until I’m sexy in bed or on the runway. It’s my thing.”

“You really seem far from innocent to me.”

“I am, though, in my heart. But you’re probably right. You don’t know the half of it, either. If I’m really innocent, you’re really good, Do Kyungsoo.” Kyungsoo froze, his cheeks ruddy in the chill. Then Jongin grinned. “On your show, I mean. I know you told Yoonja everything. Bastard.” And Kyungsoo laughed, and the atmosphere eased again.

“I’ll tell you one thing about acting. It’s the worst-kept secret in the business,” Kyungsoo mused. “It’s so much more fun to play the bad guy. Or at least somebody who has done something wrong. It’s addicting, almost. Especially when you’re someone who just makes pancakes and does laundry and watches movies when they’re at home.” He ran a hand through his hair.

“You should have roommates. They’d love you. Mine hate me, I have dogs and I don’t clean up my dishes.”

“Something tells me they don’t, Jongin.” Kyungsoo gave him a wry smile. “Besides, I learned that all at home. My older brother was gone most of the time and my mom worked, so I took care of shit.”

“That’ll be it.” Jongin sighed, turning on the balcony to lean backwards, on his elbows, tilting his face up to study the inside of Kyungsoo’s apartment through the sliding glass door. “I had all older sisters. I was spoiled as you can imagine.”

“I can imagine.”

“But you’d really be a great boyfriend. All that drive to take care of somebody and nowhere to put it. You should come out.” He smiled, squinting his eyes against the sun as he watched Kyungsoo blush a little under the praise.

“I-I’m out to my family, and friends, and stuff,” Kyungsoo replied. “And I have to save something for the gossip columns later in my career, right?”

That made Jongin laugh. “Right.” The model finished his last sip of coffee and pushed off the balcony, appearing to mentally gather himself. It was fascinating to watch, like a man drawing a veil over his face. His features became stonier, like he didn’t need the sun quite as much anymore. “I should get going.”

Kyungsoo stood up straight, too. “Yes. Right. Yes.” Mentally kicked himself. How eloquent.

Despite what he’d said earlier, Jongin put his mug in the sink and picked his phone up from the counter, shoving it in his back pocket. Soon they were standing right outside Kyungsoo’s door, avoiding eye contact, unsure of how to say goodbye forever.

“It’s nice, you know,” Jongin said after a pause. “You not asking anything of me.”

Kyungsoo slid his eyes over to Jongin. “Would you like me to?”

Jongin hesitated—looked like he surprised even himself with the hesitation. Here in the hallway his skin looked a little ashy and tired and Kyungsoo realized neither of them had gotten enough sleep. But he looked reluctant, too. “No, it’s just—you’re very polite. And you aren’t under any pretentions, or anything. I don’t know. I think I’m trying to thank you.”

Kyungsoo smiled warmly. “You’re welcome. Thank you.”

Jongin’s smile in return was tinged with regret and bittersweet coffee. “See you never.”

“See you never.”

* * *

Author's note: I am fully aware that this reads like a (smutty) oneshot. I must simply promise that it is not and that this is called the prologue for a reason :)


	2. Driftwalking

Jongin couldn’t believe they’d never gotten a shoot together. That they were first meeting because Jongin was well-known enough that they’d fired off an invitation to him on the off chance that he deigned to attend their anniversary party. Well, his horse wasn’t that high, and he was glad of it.

Oh Sehun was pretty and Jongin was going to fuck him because that’s what Kim Jongin did. Kim Jongin fucked people. Even if they were celebrating two years as a couple, like Sehun and his boyfriend. Even if they hadn’t really made it in the industry yet. But Jongin felt confident that Sehun would. He could get by on just his face, nevermind his height.

The nightclub was in full swing as Jongin wove through models and actors and backup dancers, their feet pounding on a neon floor that pulsed with bass. He tried not to look at the floor because if he did he felt like he was drifting in a chaotic throng of people and he felt like he couldn’t get out. Towards the back there were some tall tables where people stood with drinks, yelling at each other over the music in an attempt at conversation.

The blonde seemed surprised to see Jongin but recognized him right away, taking in his leather pants and dark designer top with a sweep of long eyelashes. “KIm Jongin.” His voice was deep and scratchy and he bowed slightly in startled recognition. “I-Nice to meet you.”

“Thanks for having me. Looks like a fun time. Unfortunate that we’ve never met, you know? You look gorgeous.”

Sehun’s cheeks flushed and he licked his lips. “Thank you. Um. Thank you for coming. I didn’t think you would. You’re an amazing model.”

“Is that your way of telling me I look gorgeous too?” Jongin smirked as Sehun blushed some more. Jongin took a sip of his martini.

“No—yes—I just mean, in the industry,” Sehun choked out. A tall, tan boy emerged from the crowd at the nightclub and Sehun put his arm around his waist with a little bit of relief on his face. “This is my boyfriend, Tao. Tao, this is Kim Jongin.”

“That model?” Tao looked Jongin up and down, less impressed by him than Sehun was. Jongin returned the favor. He could not begrudge Sehun taste; Tao was handsome. “Well, I hope you have fun tonight,” Tao said. Jongin took another sip of his drink. “We rented out the whole club, and you’ll probably know a few people, although most people ignored us. It’s just vanity because we like to pamper each other and, you know, party.” Tao winked.

“I more came for the people I don’t know,” replied Jongin, looking straight at Sehun. He hoped he was making the model uncomfortable. But they were a rock solid couple and he wasn’t going to get into Sehun’s pants by talking to them both this way. “I’ll catch you later.” He smirked at Sehun and faded back into the crowd,

He found Kris brooding like usual towards the back, halfway through a large glass of whiskey, his eyebrows bushy and furrowed in self-contemplation. “Kris, my old friend!”

“Kim Jongin, vice in human form! What can I do you for?” Kris sounded bored. Good.

“How does seduction sound as a diversion for the night?”

“Sounds like what you do every night. Why should I?”

“I wouldn’t keep doing it if there wasn’t any fun in it.”

Kris leaned against the bar and took another sip of his drink. “You have... a point.”

“See that tall, tan guy over there? With his arm wrapped around Sehun? You know Sehun, right? Wait, is that how I got into this party? I can’t remember.”

“No, you’re just famous. The one that looks like a cat?”

“Yeah.”

“What about him?”

“Well. Take him home or whatever. I want him out of the way.” Jongin was done with his martini and ordered another one. He’d finished the last one with disturbing speed but he didn’t feel like thinking about it. The peel of lemon spun drunkenly in the liquid and Jongin zoned out looking at it, waiting.

Kris turned his face and studied Tao for a little, dark eyes intent, assessing. “I assume you want to fuck the other one.” Jongin didn’t say anything. “You’re sick, bro. I’m not helping you do that. Isn’t this their party, about, like, being together? They’re only twenty what, two?—for God’s sake.”

“I’m only twenty two,” Jongin pointed out. “Please, though? Since when did you care about anything since Marcella broke up with you? This’ll be great for you. He even kinda looks like me. And I don’t fuck you for your own sake.” Jongin grinned, shoving Kris’ shoulder jovially.

“That’s emotional manipulation. On multiple levels.” Kris was a little bit drunk. But his drunk voice was smoother than his normal voice, so Jongin thought that was probably good. Finally Kris shoved off the bar, turning to Jongin with a wry smile.

“Fine. But when I regret in the morning, let me rail on you a little, okay? You’re probably ruining lives right now.”

Jongin took another drink and watched Sehun on the dance floor. Took another drink and closed his eyes and felt the alcohol fizzle in his gut and listened to his brain settle into the familiar pattern of a mindless hunt.

Sehun jumped when Jongin came up behind him, but relaxed when he saw it who it was. Smiled, even. A good sign. Jongin didn’t talk to him much since that’s not what he’d come for and the music was too loud besides. Sehun had had a few drinks and seemed content to watch him dance anyway. Eventually Sehun pulled him close and Jongin’s gut leaped and he wondered if he was going to get luckier than he’d thought, but Sehun just asked in a rough voice if Jongin would get some drinks.

Tao was at the bar too. The bar was lit from beneath with a icy blue light that looked like it might burn from cold but was warm to the touch. They smiled at each other and Tao didn’t seem to view him in an unkind light. “It really is nice of you to come.” Sehun’s boyfriend sounded sober. Jongin tried to look around inconspicuously for Kris. “Sehun loves all your stuff. Wants to follow in your footsteps, I think.”

“Does he. Lovely,” Jongin drawled. Then, “He certainly has the energy for it. You look tired.”

“Eh, not so tired.”

“You seem like a great boyfriend. You guys aren’t even married and you throw anniversary parties and stuff.”

“I’m rich. What’s money if you don’t use it?” Tao grinned.

“All I’m saying is, if you wanted to dip for a bit, or for the night or whatever, I could always entertain him here with tricks of the modelling trade. Insider stuff. And he has his friends, too.” It was a risk. It counted on Tao’s absolute trust in Sehun. Because Jongin couldn’t dial down the sexy once he was there, so now he was essentially a sexpot asking Tao to leave Sehun alone with him.

Then he spotted Kris. He almost called to the tall journalist, but he saw who he was fervently conversing with and ducked his head. Vaguely, he heard Tao saying, “I might take you up on that. For Sehun’s sake—he idolizes you.”

But really he was trying not to get spotted by the lithe figure with perfect features speaking in angry tones to Kris. And it only got worse—next to Luhan stood Junwoo, soft features set in a superior sneer. Jongin needed to leave now. He shot Kris a mental thank you for stalling them and melted onto the dance floor again, twisting between people until he found Sehun chatting with friends, conveniently near the door.

“Hey, your boyfriend’s given me permission to take you backstage where the Givenchy show is happening day after next. Wanna come?” He hoped it was the right bait, placed just right in Sehun’s ear, using the other’s broad shoulders to hide himself from the newcomers. Sehun turned to him, small mouth hanging open a little, and Jongin tried to look at something else. Sehun looked for Tao but Tao wasn’t in sight.

“...Now?”

“Yeah, I know the guard but his shift’s up at one.”

“Give me five?”

“We gotta go now.” Jongin didn’t know what expression to give Sehun to get him to come; he kept his face neutral and open. He felt himself closing in and this was the part he enjoyed, but he was also scared of the people across the club. Sehun relented. Jongin downed the rest of his drink in one gulp. Softening Sehun up in the car was messy but Sehun idolized him so it wasn’t that hard and his mistakes in seduction were forgiven. He gave the boy lazy smirkes and let his legs sit wide open and watched as Sehun licked his lips more and struggled to settle his eyes in any one place.

Jongin really did take him to Givenchy. He never took anyone to his apartment. It was a rule. And he really did know the guard. He smiled and the guy seemed surprised to see him but he waved them through, shaking his head in disbelief at the time. The hallways were dark and full of fabric and it felt like swimming towards his destination except he wasn’t so in control. This was just what he did.

He moved towards a secluded dressing room and eased Sehun’s guilt and opened his legs and Sehun practically drooled. Jongin was tan and the lights in the dressing room were low so Jongin figured that maybe he thought he could drift between imagining he was fucking an expensive model and his boyfriend who he loved.

It was nice like it usually was. He’d succeeded like he usually did. But his mind flipped strangely when Sehun pinned him against the couch one last time and tugged on his cock and he came. His mind didn’t go blank. Afterwards, it took him longer to return to himself, and when he did, Sehun was wide-eyed and he looked like he was about to panic.

“What the fuck just happened?” The blonde’s voice sounded dazed.

“Well I’m not the fucking pied piper,” Jongin replied, wiping himself with some tissues. He still felt a little tipsy from the club and the post-orgasam stupor wasn’t helping his fuzzyness. “You’re the one who decided to come and it’s not like I forced you to stretch me then fuck me.”

Sehun sat in shocked silence. Jongin let his head fall back. “Do you watch Sunshine, My Love?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I dunno.”

“Sometimes, I don’t know. If it’s on.” Jongin chuckled at that. “That lead actor’s, isn’t he new? He’s pretty good. Although the actress is gorgeous as fuck.”

“Mmm.”

“Jongin?”

“Mm?”

“Nothing. You looked like you were asleep.”

“Feel free to look around, just don’t break anything, okay? I need a nap, and then we can go.” Jongin snuggled back against the couch, throwing an arm over his eyes. He heard the door shut softly and breathed out. Why had he thought about Kyungsoo? When he came? Maybe he was getting his conquests mixed up.

He woke up much later, and his watch said it was pushing half past three. He heaved a sigh; his chest felt heavy and he could feel his toenails scraping his shoes through his socks. His clothing felt too scratchy and the air in the dressing room felt too stuffy. He heaved himself up in one gathered effort and found Sehun sitting on the edge of the white plasticine catwalk, legs dangling down into the dark space where the spectators sat. His shirt was wrinkled but his hair was still perfect because Jongin hadn’t touched it.

“Sorry it’s so late,” Jongin ventured. In the muted lighting of the slumbering catwalk, he worried he blended in. But Sehun didn’t jump or react. “I fell asleep. You should have woken me up.”

“You really are a great model,” Sehun said, like nothing Jongin had just said mattered at all. “I have all your magazines.”

“Thank you.” Jongin sat down on the catwalk next to him. He was used to it in its state of aggressive glamour and hot lights. He was used to celebrities with sunglasses sitting in the front row, trying to decide if he was more attractive than them. If they could wear it better. “I do work hard at it, you know. I know the guard because years ago—I must have been eighteen—I used to sneak in here and practice walking. And then Riccardo Tisci discovered me.”

Sehun didn’t reply, just looked at his hands. Jongin sighed. “I called a cab. It should be outside any minute.” And Sehun was up and weaving between the seats towards the exit. Jongin was getting a headache.

In the cab: “Where am I taking you?”

“I’d rather not go home.”

“To the mall then. Or someplace neutral.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Where then?”

“I’d take a shower.”

Jongin hesitated. It was a big rule not to ever bring them home. It protected him. It kept the moving parts of his life separate. Sehun still wasn’t making eye contact.

“Okay.” He gave the driver his address and they were quiet the whole ride. The world sounded like a big dark blanket had been thrown over it and then the wind rushed over top. He sat back; closed his eyes—listened to the wind and imagined it tearing the pieces of the taxi apart piece by piece.

Sehun followed him up the stairs to his apartment and he was on autopilot until two figures emerged from the other end of the narrow hallway of his apartment building. The lights were dimmed to conserve energy for the night so he hadn’t noticed them.

“Tao.” Sehun was the first one to speak, the syllable choked out from the back of his throat. He sounded like he’d stumbled back a step but Jongin didn’t look. He’d frozen up and was staring at Luhan. Luhan stared back, eyes shadowed so Jongin couldn’t see his pupils.

“I met some interesting people,” Tao said to Sehun. “Learned some interesting things. I came to take you home.” And Jongin looked at Luhan.

“We went to see the Givenchy show backstage.” Sehun’s voice was very small and he sounded scared behind Jongin.

Luhan finally opened his mouth. “Jongin, it was their anniversary party. That’s low, even for your standards. You would’ve been better off taking a virginity or fucking in public.”

“What are you doing stalking me at three a.m. anyway, Luhan?” Jongin asked. He sounded tired and he would have cringed at his own voice but he didn’t bother.

“I’m a humanist, that’s why. I’m trying to get you to own up to the shit that you do. That’s a humanist thing.” Luhan crossed his arms. His lips were pressed very thinly together. Jongin knew that if he were up to it, he might pout a lot and act really cute and maybe Luhan would get flustered and leave, but he didn’t feel like it.

“Sehun, Luhan told me a lot of things that made me really nervous. Or should I be talking to you, Jongin?” Tao’s skin shifted in the light like the rippling muscles of a stalking cat.

“He probably loves you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Jongin shrugged. “I really just want to go to bed. But it was a fun night.” He took out his keys and unlocked the door to his apartment. Let it swing open and his stomach sink. There was Junkwon, his mousey roommate, listening at the door. The two others leaning in the entrance, clearly waiting for him go open the door. His dogs must have been confined to his room again. “What’s this, an intervention?”

“We should probably have intervened a while ago,” said Martin from behind Junkwon, voice full and authoritative. “Apparently it’s late for that.”

Jongin turned back to Luhan. “So you want everybody in my life to hate me because of what I did to you?”

“I just want people to be aware. I wasn’t aware.” It was three a.m. and Luhan looked a little tired too; bags hung under his eyes and his shoulders showed the telltale droop of exhaustion.

Jongin looked back at Martin. “So? It’s not an intervention, what is it?”

“An eviction.”

“...I think I might stay with Yongmin tonight.” Sehun’s quiet tones floated towards Jongin from a little ways down the hallway and his stomach sank even more.

“Sehun.” Tao’s voice sounded a little broken and Jongin pressed his eyes closed; shut it all out and felt himself floating on unsteady feet. Opened them and looked into the faces of his roommates.

“Okay. I’ll come get my things tomorrow. Feed the dogs, they’re not sluts like me.” And he turned away from Luhan’s triumphant eyes and took the stairs around and around and around all the way back to the chilly street. Stared at the boulevard and realized he had nowhere to go. He was in no condition to charm and fuck himself into another bed.

He took out his phone and opened the contacts. There wouldn’t be anything there. His parents lived in another city. No one close by. He stopped and scrolled back. The contact glowed back steadily from the screen.

[ _Do Kyungsoo_ ]

He never kept a lock on his phone because it was a bother so it was possible that Kyungsoo had put his number in his phone. For some reason Jongin felt tears prick the corners of his eyes but he didn’t know why. The wind was pretty cold and the pavement was hard beneath his shoes. The streetlight wasn’t as strong as it normally was. It would go out soon.

The dialtone was harsh and mechanic and he jumped at how loud it was.

Sleepily: “Hello?”

Jongin swallowed. “...Kyungsoo?”

* * *

When Kyungsoo opened the door, he didn’t expect the disheveled, red-eyed Jongin that stood before him. The model’s shirt was half-tucked and his fly was undone. He smelled strongly of alcohol and city air and sex. His shoulders drooped.

The hallway was cold compared to the comfortable temperature of his apartment, and Kyungsoo was in his cotton pajama pants and t-shirt, so he just ruffled his hair, looked Jongin up and down, and stepped back to let Jongin pass, shrugging. “You look like shit, dude.”

Jongin didn’t respond, treading carefully into the apartment like a stray cat that didn’t believe it was in safe territory.

“Are you... okay? Do you need a shower? I mean, it’s four a.m., and I’m going to go back to bed, to be honest.” Kyungsoo watched as Jongin forcibly dismantled some of his defenses. It only made him hunch over more.

Finally, he spoke: “A shower would be great.”

“Cool. I don’t really have clothes that would fit you though. I’ll leave out some sweatpants or something.”

Jongin just stared at him wide-eyed. Like he didn’t know what to do in the face of kindness. Finally, he just said: “Thank you. I didn’t know you put your name into my phone.”

“Well, the innocent need protectors sometimes.” Kyungsoo smiled softly and went to find some clothes for his tall new houseguest while Jongin disappeared into the shower. He wondered if the model would be there in the morning.

* * *

Author's note: this is basically an introduction to Jongin, but I realize it probably raises more questions than it answers. Also, sorry it's a really short chapter, but it's packed with stuff! The next will be longer (and about kaisoo). Let me know what you think!


	3. Sleepcrying

 

Kyungsoo woke up worried from his dreams. He couldn’t remember what they’d been—he never could—but he could hear them echoing in his mind and he was tired of it already and the day had only just started. But the sun was persistently streaming through his window so he yawned and passed a hand through his hair, giving himself ten, no twenty seconds to lie and stare at the ceiling and think of nothing at all.

Then he began to worry about Jongin and he swung his legs over the side of his bed to go find the model. He’d sensed a flightiness about him the night they’d slept together, like he’d intended to leave before Kyungsoo woke up. Kyungsoo had only had a few one-night stands, and he’d usually been drunker than he was that night. It hadn’t been much of a task to disable Jongin’s alarm for four a.m. and type in his contact as a cheeky afterthought. He hadn’t expected him to stay for pancakes. 

The house was silent as he padded out of his bedroom into the main studio, craning his neck as he tried to see over the back of the couch where he assumed Jongin was sleeping. He saw his back first, tan and bare like it was on glittering fire from the morning sun. Like champagne. His neck was twisted to the side and one of his arms was hanging off the couch. Kyungsoo squinted but couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He tiptoed closer, loathe to wake the model from what seemed to be a peaceful sleep.

He still had trouble seeing a rise and fall of Jongin’s chest. He made his way around the couch and caught sight of Jongin’s face, his lips mushed against the fabric of the couch and his hair caught every which way on his head. He seemed clean, at least—like he’d gotten a shower. Kyungsoo leaned a little closer. Yes—his chest was moving up and down a little bit. He was alive.

“You gonna stare at me all day?” Jongin’s voice was a rough mumble and it was a wonder Kyungsoo understood him at all. As it was, he jumped back as Jongin blinked sleepily like a bear coming out of hibernation. He didn’t bother moving—or perhaps he didn’t have the strength, at the moment. 

“I wasn’t sure if you were alive. It was hard to tell if you were breathing.” Kyungsoo swallowed. “Go back to sleep. You had a... late night, I guess.” 

Jongin’s eyelids fluttered, like the invitation was too good to turn down. Kyungsoo watched as he battled with himself, dragging them open again, pulling his arm up from where his fingers brushed the light hardwood floor, sitting up. “No,” he said, his voice still scratchy. His lips pouted when he talked and pieces of his hair were standing out and he was half naked and Kyungsoo clenched his jaw. “I should go. You’ve been a lot nicer than you needed to be.”

“It’s no problem,” replied Kyungsoo, sinking down into a chair next to the couch and pulling his legs into a crisscross. “You were in pretty bad shape last night. It was common decency to let you have a shower and somewhere to sleep at least.”

Jongin laughed ironically, like something Kyungsoo had said was depressingly funny. “Yeah. I really fucked up the whole perfect-sex-god thing for you, didn’t I? And probably this perfectly good pair of sweatpants.” He pointed to his legs. His waist was small enough for the pants, but he’d had to roll them up so they came up to just below his knees. Kyungsoo chuckled. Jongin’s eyes crinkled and he smiled. Then he reached across the couch to grab his phone from his side table and Kyungsoo wondered briefly if he was already trying to redeem it by simply putting himself on display for Kyungsoo. But he didn’t really seem to be thinking about it as much—he didn’t seem as premeditated as he had that night. 

“I’ll call a hotel or something,” Jongin said, standing up. Kyungsoo had to crane his neck from his sitting position. “Let me go put on my other clothes. Jesus, they probably smell like the devil himself pissed on them.”

“Really,” said Kyungsoo quietly. “It’s like no one has ever been hospitable to you before. I’m shooting locally for a few weeks more at least. Stay.”

“So what, like a roommate? I can pay you, and stuff. And all my shit fits into, like, three suitcases.” Jongin tilted his head from behind the couch where he’d been moving toward the bathroom to change. 

“No, not like a roommate, Jongin,” Kyungsoo replied, exasperated. Then he looked at the model and Jongin’s eyes were wide and utterly clueless and his heart melted again and he sighed. “Haven’t you had friends? Like a friend. Until you can get on your feet again, get an apartment or something. And if you want to tell me what happened, you can, but I’m not pressuring you or anything.”

Jongin was still staring at him like he was speaking chinese. Finally he opened his mouth, his lips shining pink. “I got evicted,” he said. Stilted. Like he wasn’t sure if that was the right response but that was all he had. 

“What’d you do, fuck the wrong person?” Kyungsoo smirked, but it faded quickly when Jongin didn’t say anything, just looked down at his phone as he twirled it in his hand. “Hey, look, that’s stupid and, um, morally lacking of them to deny you access to your own home at, like, four a.m. in the morning. I doubt it was your fault living with assholes like that anyway.” That made Jongin smile. Just a little bit. He muttered something but Kyungsoo didn’t catch it. “What?”

“Like a friend,” Jongin said, his voice moving from its scratchy morning to its more normal honey. “You must think I’m a total loser if I don’t even know what that’s supposed to be like.”

“Well.” Kyungsoo frowned. “You need clothes. I can go get your stuff, if you don’t wanna go see your old roommates and stuff. I’m off work today. And then... well, I’m off work today. Although I did want to screen this new movie that’s in prerelease.”

“What movie?” 

“The Salesman. I told you, it’s not out yet. And not a lot of people have copies, so.”

Jongin looked curious. “You don’t need to go get my stuff,” Jongin said, rubbing the back of his ear sheepishly. “I’d watch a movie, though.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he just stood there, shirtless, waiting for Kyungsoo to do something. Then his stomach rumbled.

Kyungsoo chuckled. “Maybe some breakfast first.” 

Jongin smiled, and this time he looked a little more like himself. 

He tried to make pancakes himself, but he had to start over once because he added too much sugar and then Kyungsoo took over after the second burned pancake. He didn’t feel too resentful. Jongin sat on a stool by the small island and watched Kyungsoo flip pancakes and ate them as they came off the pan until Kyungsoo complained quietly, after which he promptly abstained from eating everything, stacking them into a neat, steaming pile for Kyungsoo. “You don’t want coffee?” Kyungsoo asked again.

Jongin shrugged. “I told you I’m not doing coffee right now. I’ll pop out and smoke, though, if you don’t mind.”

Kyungsoo snorted. “Because  _ that  _ makes sense.” And Jongin gave this small little smile, like it would make perfect sense if he could only explain it. 

Instead, he said: “You know, it was different, when I was never going to see you again. I told you things I wouldn’t tell someone I planned on seeing again. I guess that’s obvious. But when you’re not invested and then you are you realize how much you hold back.”

“I haven’t given you any reason to.” Kyungsoo swivelled on his stool; Jongin had stood up and walked halfway to the balcony, a box of cigarettes appeared somehow in his hand. Maybe he’d brought them with him last night. 

“People bring their own reasons.” Jongin smiled tightly.

“Are you just saying I need to get you drunk?” Kyungsoo’s heart lifted a little when that made Jongin laugh.

“Well, you’re free to try,” the model replied, retreating to the balcony. Kyungsoo watched him for a still moment when he should have been putting the pancakes away or doing the dishes. He watched him tip the cigarette out of the box and fish the lighter out of his back pocket. Watched him lift it to his lips and flick the wheel and thought for a moment that the wind on the balcony that was blowing Jongin’s hair back from his forehead would blow the flame out. He still wasn’t wearing a shirt. But the cigarette caught and Jongin’s chest expanded and then a vaporous puff of smoke drifted from his lips. Kyungsoo wondered if this was what photographers felt like. Like they needed to pick up the camera because... well, just  _ because _ . Because now Jongin was leaning against the railing and looking across the city like it might give him the answer to a question he’d been asking for a thousand years.

He put the pancakes away and put the movie on and by the time the trailers were over Jongin came back in, sitting with his knees close together and his hands tucked under his thighs so he barely took up any space on the couch. He pouted and his face screwed up. “There’s glare on the TV.”

“We  _ are  _ watching a movie in the ass-middle of the day,” Kyungsoo deadpanned. 

“It’s only called day because God said so and night because God called it that.” Jongin huffed and stood up again, tugging Kyungsoo’s blackout curtains over his clear french doors and then over the other big window over the living space. The only window uncovered was the one near the kitchen, a smaller one, and it cast a moonish glow on Jongin’s face since the day was cloudy and blue-tinged. 

“There. Night.” Jongin seemed proud of himself as he turned his eyes to the television and for a moment he transformed into a man his age, only twenty-two but maybe even less, with wide eyes as he watched the beginning of the movie, eyes flicking up and down as he read the subtitles. Gradually he brought his legs up from their together position and crossed them. Kyungsoo sat like he usually did, in his corner of the couch, one hand draped over the back and one resting on the armrest. It was a good movie and they didn’t really talk. 

When the credits rolled Jongin blinked and his eyes scanned the names without reading them. Kyungsoo sighed and rolled back the curtains, revealing a sky free of clouds. Aggressively clear, like a punishment for its exclusion from the day.

Jongin reached his arms long above his head, stretching so Kyungsoo could count his ribs and his stomach caved the wrong way. Then he turned to rest his chin on the back of the couch to look at Kyungsoo. “What time is it?”

Kyungsoo looked at the oven in the kitchen. “A little after noon. Why?” 

“I have work at one-thirty. I should probably be there since I’m a senior model and I have to look like I have my life together and shit.” Jongin rolled back onto the couch onto his back. He looked distinctly like he did  _ not  _ have his life together. 

“...work?”

“Yeah, work. As in, rehearsal for that Givenchy show tomorrow? I don’t just show up the day of with clothes that fit me perfectly and glide down the runway.” Jongin smirked a little. “That’s what we want it to look like.”

“No, it makes sense, I just...” Kyungsoo trailed off, moving about, taking the movie out of the DVD player, putting it away, turning off the TV. “I guess I forgot you worked, or something.” He felt like hiding his face as he spoke. 

“It’s fine,” Jongin replied, getting up from the couch. “I’m used to it. I can pick up my things on the way back here anyway. That is, as long as you still...” he swallowed. “As long as you’re still okay with this. I’m not this kind of person. I could just go to a hotel and take care of myself.”

“You burned the  _ pancakes. _ ”

“That’s what room service is for.”

“At least stay tonight. It’s only three suitcases.”

“Alright.” Jongin’s eyes crinkled a little bit and he looked happy. “Friends, then.” He stood there kind of stupidly, like he was too busy thinking to move his body.

“Jongin?”

“Mm?”

“As your friend, I think you should probably put on a shirt before you go outside. At least to work. However unconventional. Just. Advice.” Kyungsoo swallowed. Jongin looked down at himself and a barking laugh escaped his mouth. 

“Right you are,” he replied. Ten minutes later he was out the door but he turned right instead of left towards the main elevators. To the right was the way out the back. But Kyungsoo didn’t ask him about it. He wondered if he should be asking more questions. Instead he called Joongki and met him at his place to run lines for his drama. Joongki didn’t ask questions either, but then again—Kyungsoo gave no indication that the model of the moment was currently sleeping on his couch. 

* * *

He returned in the evening with groceries, going back and forth in his mind about whether to make dinner for one or for two. Jongin had a reputation, Joongki said—Joongki had said that voluntarily, without knowing anything about their particular situation. Jongin had a reputation that meant he didn’t show up places unless they were modelling gigs, and then he was the picture of professionalism. That’s why people kept hiring him. He was the perfect bad boy.

Still, Kyungsoo made dinner for two. He liked cooking and italian spaghetti had been on sale at the grocery store and he was making his own sauce from tomatoes and listening to jazz and running his lines in his head. He even thought, in a detached sort of way, about what an idiot his character in his drama was. About how many problems would be solved if he just said what he meant. 

There was a knock on the door right when the sauce was getting done and the pasta was steaming in a bowl, ready to eat. Kyungsoo opened the door expecting one tall, probably tired model to walk through the door. Maybe he’d require assistance with the fabled three suitcases. Instead, his feet were flooded in fur and little yelps and the skitter of tiny nails on wood floors as two dogs charged into the apartment. 

“You made dinner!” Jongin’s voice was different than it had been this morning: it was deeper and fuller and more in command of itself. But Jongin was childishly delighted by the sight of food on the small black ikea table. 

“You brought dogs!” Kyungsoo responded, stepping aside cautiously for Jongin to enter, craning his neck behind him to see if there were any more.

“Yeah, they don’t really fit into suitcases,” Jongin replied, crouching as the brown one came up to nuzzle him. “Jjanggu’s at my parent’s house, so I’ve just got Monggu and Jjanggah here,” Jongin explained, pointing first to the small brown dog and then to the white one, who was off nosing at Kyungsoo’s couch. “They don’t actually cause that much of a fuss. I’ve got beds for them and everything. And I’ll take them out later tonight and tomorrow morning so you don’t have shit in your apartment or anything.”

“And yet you burn the pancakes,” Kyungsoo mused, going back over to the pasta to put it in bowls and add the sauce.

“What?” Jongin was across the room, shrugging off his coat (this was new; a jean jacket, Kyungsoo noticed) and dropping the small shoulder bag he’d brought in with him. 

“You’re responsible for two dogs—”

“—three, Jjangu’s away—”

“—three dogs, and yet you burn the pancakes,” Kyungsoo teased. Jongin blushed and Kyungsoo felt victorious. Jongin was hungrier than he’d anticipated and he wasn’t going to have enough for leftovers like he’d thought. Jongin ate more like an athlete than a model. He spoke in quiet deep tones about Givenchy and half the time Kyungsoo paid attention and the other half the time Kyungsoo just thought about how he was cute like this, with just the dim light above the dining table on, mouth half full, vocal chords echoing.

“Wish I could work again. That’s what you make me want to do, you know,” Kyungsoo said, sitting back in his chair and casting a suspicious glance at Monggu, who was underfoot under the table. “Work. There isn’t much else for me to ask you about.”

“There isn’t much else worth knowing.” Jongin was still smiling. The reply came naturally, like he so wholly believed it that he was simply regurgitating gospel. “I work; I’m a model. I’m pretty. So.”

“Yeah, but everybody knows that.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, but I know you have not two but three dogs and that—and I didn’t say anything because I didn’t  _ notice _ —but Jongin, did you bring your shit in a paper Starbucks bag?”

“Maybe.”

Kyungsoo shook his head. They fell into a companionable silence for a moment and then Kyungsoo’s cell phone rang and Jongin jumped visibly. Kyungsoo giggled and picked up his phone. “Hello?”

“Hi, is this Do Kyungsoo?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“Are you in private? My name is Lu Han, I was wondering if I could explain a few things to you. It’s delicate for me, you understand.”

“Um... sure.” Kyungsoo frowned. Usually he got shady calls like this from his friends when they were in awkward situations, or the occasional executive. But if his memory served him correctly, Lu Han was a soccer player. A very good one, well known not just because he was good at soccer but because he was hot. He stood, and now Jongin looked clueless but respectful, idly rubbing a hand up and down Jjangah’s back. Kyungsoo covered up the mouthpiece of the phone. “I’m gonna go take this, Jongin. You know how to do dishes, right?” He grinned when Jongin’s face fell in a way that was probably meant to be imperceptible.

* * *

Jongin was finishing with the last plate when Kyungsoo finally reemerged from his bedroom. He’d taken his time, hoping the actor would come back sometime in the middle of the dish-doing so they could stand at the sink together and Kyungsoo’s scent could sink into his nostrils and relax him. Now an uneasy feeling was settling in his stomach and when he looked up after placing the last dish on the drying rack Kyungsoo was leaning against the small stainless steel refrigerator, arms crossed, watching him. He didn’t like the look on Kyungsoo’s face.

“Everything alright?” He asked, licking his lips and wiping his hands on a dishtowel. Kyungsoo’s lips were drawn thinner than he’d ever seen them and there was a crease between his eyebrows. He knew before the answer that everything was not alright. And he wished they lived before phones, so he could have at least had a night where everything was fine, like he was a little kid again, and being pretty was just that and nothing more.

“That was Luhan.” Kyungsoo looked up at Jongin like he was forcing himself to make eye contact. “He really doesn’t like you. He was trying to be diplomatic but you must have really pissed him off.”

“Luhan.” A cynical laugh bubbled up from Jongin’s chest. “Nah, he’s just lonely. I’m sure whatever he told you was just what you needed to hear to get you to hate me. It’s probably all lies, anyway.” The words felt like slime coming from his mouth.

“Come on, Jongin. You can do better than that.” Kyungsoo’s mouth dipped into a frown. “I don’t ask anything of you so long as it doesn’t enter my apartment.”

“All for the best, then,” replied Jongin. His face felt like it was on fire. His body too. “If you didn’t kick me out now he’d find where you live and then he’d  _ really  _ be entering your apartment. But really, what did he tell you?”

“I’d rather you just tell me what you think he told me.”

“Please don’t make me.” There was a pause of silence and Jongin realized how pathetic that sounded. He licked his lips. “I tell myself what he told you every day, Kyungsoo, I really do. But I don’t think I can...” He swallowed. “Here’s what I will tell you. Or beg, I don’t know the difference anymore, I guess.” Kyungsoo was so disgusted with him that now he was looking away. Well, it was easier this way. “I really like it here and I don’t like it a lot of places. I know it sounds spoiled or something but—but Kyungsoo, you’re my friend now, I hope. Or something.” Kyungsoo shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Just give me a week. I won’t cause trouble. I’ll be too busy getting myself out of all the shit I’m already in.”

“A week?” Kyungsoo’s voice was soft and surprised. “To sleep here, that’s all?”

“I’ll take care of Monggu and Jjangah. I’ll do my dishes and clean. It’s like I won’t even be here.”

“That’s not the point.” Kyungsoo said it almost under his breath. Then, louder: “And what do you plan on doing after a week?”

“On not being here anymore. After a week you can kick me out. But you can’t now. Not right now.” Jongin had the vague sense he wasn’t making sense. The lights weren’t bright enough to give him the eloquence he assumed when he was working, so he was left with a thick tongue to talk around.

“I still want to know what you thought Luhan told me.” Kyungsoo was studying him now. Blatantly.

“I’ll try. Not now. Not now but I’ll try.”

The actor took a moment to think, his eyes darting back and forth as he weighed the risks of letting Jongin stay with him. “Okay,” he said. Voice soft, decision final. “But you’re paying for your share of the meals.”

The air left Jongin’s chest. “Of course. I could give you a million dollars. Do I have a million dollars? I could kiss you. I’ll make Monggu kiss you.” He grinned when Kyungsoo made a face at the small white dog leaning on his leg.

That was it, though: he was wiped out and he didn’t want to go out that night. Instead, he annoyed Kyungsoo until the older relented and put in another movie for them to watch. It was longer than either of them had imagined and by the time it was over it was late at night. Kyungsoo dissappeared into his bedroom with one last fond ruffle of Jjangah’s fur and Jongin stepped into the shower, turning it hotter than he usually allowed himself. He let his memories overwhelm him. Imagined them burning through his skin and turning it inside out, so that his face was grotesque and veined and fleshy. And then he turned the water cold and locked it all away again. 

When he got out of the shower the apartment was quiet and the city was too: cars whispered down the street far below and Jongin closed the balcony door because it was chilly and he was done smoking for the day. He took the dogs out but not for very long; he felt an exhaustion in his bones that didn’t come just from work. The dogs seemed tired, too, settling right down as Jongin changed into pajamas. And the apartment was silent and peaceful. But when he passed Kyungsoo’s door he hesitated. There  _ was  _ sound. At first thought it might be porn, or maybe Kyungsoo was running lines, or talking to someone on the phone, but it was none of those things. It was sniffling. And as Jongin stood perfectly still, so his body weight didn’t make the floorboards creak, to the side so his feet didn’t show in silhouette below the door, he heard a muffled sob. He shook his head and hurried back to the couch, pulling the big comforter over his body. It made him feel swaddled. Like a baby who doesn’t know the world. But it came again through the walls like a ghost of the hot water, making him shiver as he searched for sleep. A sob.

Kyungsoo cried at night.

* * *

Jongin woke up before Kyungsoo, to Kyungsoo’s surprise. When he padded out of his bedroom the couch was vacant and the comforter he’d given Jongin to use was neatly folded as much as possible and sitting next to the TV. Sunlight glinted off two little tins of half-eaten dog food at the base of the island by the kitchen. There—Monggu and Jjangah dozed together, pressed against the glass door leading to the balcony. And there, sitting on the counter, stood a hot cup of coffee from down the street, with a little sticky note on it.

_ Took the dogs out—got you coffee. -J _

Kyungsoo smiled. It was good coffee. It was coffee the way he liked. He turned with it in his hand, looking for the source of the coffee. The bathroom door was shut; he padded over and knocked softly on the door, a soft smile stuck stupidly on his face. Maybe putting this model up for a few days wasn’t such a bad idea. 

“Be out in a little bit,” came Jongin’s deep voice. 

“Okay. Thanks for the coffee.” Kyungsoo retreated back to the kitchen. He thought of what he was going to say to Jongin first—he had so much. He wanted to ask how he’d known what kind of coffee to get. He wanted to ask where he’d walked the dogs. Why he’d gotten up so early. If the couch was okay to sleep on. The bathroom door stayed shut. Kyungsoo huffed, petulant, and knocked again, this time leaning on the door frame. 

“Yeah?” Jongin’s voice seemed kind of exasperated.

“What the hell are you doing in there?” Kyungsoo asked.

“Jacking off, what the fuck do you think I’m doing? Kindly hold your piss.”

Kyungsoo blanched, then paused, on the edge of turning and retreating. Then he said, indignantly, “What the hell are you doing  _ that  _ for?”

The reply was stilted—breathy and punctuated by heavy breaths and the beginnings of moans. “Um, Because, hyung, I’m, mmfhh, a boy.”

Kyungsoo thought he should really turn around and walk away and let Jongin get on with it like the respectful friend he was. He didn’t even have to pee. He was just motivated by the strange desire to see Jongin’s face. He was compelled to reply, “But you’re a hot boy. You’re offending less hot boys everywhere. Just—”

“Can we leave this—ungh—conversation—when I’m not about to come?” Came Jongin’s rough voice from the other side of the door. 

Kyungsoo huffed but retreated, biting his lip. It was hard to hear clearly what was going on on the other side of the door, and he tried not to imagine Jongin’s face, Jongin’s  _ anything. Patience.  _ He turned on the radio and focused on the news until Jongin finally emerged from the bathroom, looking fresh like morning, chocolate hair pushed back, white t-shirt tucked into his jeans. He smiled when he saw Kyungsoo’s fingers wrapped around the coffee.

“Like the coffee? I thought I had you pegged but I wasn’t sure.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I really do.” Kyungsoo drank in Jongin’s image and Jongin’s smile like he’d been starving. “Where’d you walk this morning? And why were you up so early? The sun couldn’t have been up when you woke up.”

“Yeah, the show’s today so I have to get there bright and early. And I had to walk the children.” He gestured to the two sets of scrabbling nails that were excitedly surrounding him.  “I just took them around the block, really. They don’t need a whole lot. A block or two, maybe. Anyway, didn’t you have to piss, or something?” He raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms. 

Kyungsoo blushed, ducking his head. He  _ did  _ need a shower. “I need a shower.” The truth spewed from his mouth without filter. “But I’ll stay out here till you leave. You still need breakfast, right? I don’t have anywhere to be until lunch.” 

Jongin had clearly stopped listening after breakfast—he was grinning as he pulled a cigarette out of a box from somewhere and retreated to the balcony. “I’m starving. You know, I never starve myself before a show. The one time I did, I passed out.”

Kyungsoo made him extra eggs. 

It was an uneventful day for him after Jongin left—he had a lunch meeting with his manager and then he had to be on set during the afternoon for a couple of promotion shoots and commercials—but no real acting. It didn’t have the payoff some workdays had. But there was a party that night for the final shooting of Woobin’s drama and most of the people Kyungsoo liked in the world would be there. At home, looking at himself in the mirror, the thought occurred to him to invite Jongin. His hair was styled back like it usually wasn’t and he was wearing a little bit of makeup. And his pants were tight. Kyungsoo wasn’t trying to get laid, but they’d rented a room or two at a club downtown and he was a public figure. He shot Jongin a text.

Jongin didn’t reply. It was fair—Kyungsoo had the vague idea that fashion shows usually happened at night anyway. Still, he texted Jongin the address and said he’d mention his name to the bouncer just in case. 

Woobin was already a little tipsy when Kyungsoo got there, a stupid smile on his face that rivalled Kwangsoo’s. The room was quiet enough for them to hear each other and Woobin was funny as he told them about this drama compared to the others—the embarrassments and the funny bits and the bloopers behind the bloopers. Kyungsoo mentioned to him at some point that he’d invited a friend and Woobin just shrugged an assent at him—there were a couple people who Kyungsoo didn’t know too well there anyway. 

When the room got quiet he thought Woobin was trying to make another toast or something. But the tall actor was spread across a couch on the side of the room, talking animatedly to Dongwon. Then he looked to the door and caught his breath. Jongin looked somewhat uncomfortable standing there as people turned to look at him, but the discomfort didn’t come from concern about his appearance. He wore a black suit. That’s all Kyungsoo could describe it as. But he could only assume Jongin had somehow gotten to come home with something from the Givenchy he’d just walked. It fit him perfectly. His hair was still styled back and there were still hints of makeup around his eyes. After a beat Jongin spotted Kyungsoo and smiled, walking forward, his suit moving with him. As he approached the actor sound returned in the room and Jongin unbuttoned his jacket, shrugging it off as he sat next to Kyungsoo.

“I came straight away,” he said, his voice low like honey. “They put me in fucking black, can you believe it? Designers love it. They still think it’s creative. You know what it is? It’s  _ hot. _ ” And he pouted, throwing the jacket carelessly over the back of the couch. 

“Yeah, but it looks good.” Bogum was on Kyungsoo’s other side—they’d been talking about foreign dramas. “You have to admit it looks good.”

Jongin turned leonine eyes on the other actor. “Sure, but people just say it looks so good because they don’t know how to use the other colors. There’s a whole fucking rainbow.”

“Maybe Givenchy just wanted to showcase the person, not the colors.”

This made Jongin stop and raise his eyebrows. Kyungsoo chuckled between them, the alcohol in his veins making the interaction endlessly funny. “I can’t decide whether to be flattered or to ask how you knew I just walked at Givenchy,” Jongin rumbled finally, undoing his cufflinks. Kyungsoo saw the beginnings of perspiration on his hairline. Jongin took a drink from the server and took a big sip. 

“Recognized your suit and guessed,” Bogum replied, the corners of his mouth tugging upward. 

“Gold star,” Jongin drawled, smiling a little despite himself and pulling a cigarette pack out of his pants. “We can smoke here, right?”

“Honestly, Jongin,” Kyungsoo said. It was the first time he’d spoken and Jongin’s eyes snapped to him the moment he spoke. “When did you start smoking?”

Jongin shrugged as he brought the lighter to the end of the cigarette. “I dunno. Coupela days ago.”

“Why in the world....?”

Jongin didn’t reply, just looked at Kyungsoo as he let smoke leak out the corner of his mouth. Took a drink. Turned his eyes to Bogum and they got a little hooded—just a little. But Kyungsoo swallowed because he remembered the night when Jongin had been staring at him. When he’d been  _ staring  _ at him, not just looking. 

Kyungsoo upped his intake of alcohol a little bit. Jongin ingratiated himself to Woobin, who he didn’t know, and Joongki didn’t act too mean toward him—although how much of that was out of respect for Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo wasn’t sure. They played idle card games that they never finished and at one point Jongin arm wrestled Insung and Insung won and Jongin got  _ really  _ pouty and Kyungsoo noticed him looking at Bogum when he was pouting. 

He got in an argument with Joongki about kissing. It was stupid but it got heated and eventually they kissed each other to prove the point but after half a minute Joongki pulled away and stuck his tongue out at Kyungsoo, grinning and saying he’d won. Kyungsoo giggled. He looked around. He hadn’t seen Jongin in a while. He got up and made sure not to stumble, leaning on the couch a little bit. The party had gotten a little raucous so he slipped away unnoticed. Jongin wasn’t in this room so he must be in the next—they’d rented two, comfortably-sized, connected by french doors. Dark walls and dark wood and tan couches. Classy enough for the company. 

It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dimmer light of this room. It was a little quieter: a group in one corner, laughing and playing cards. Another group of three practically asleep. And in the corner, Jongin on Bogum’s lap, making out. Hips grinding. Hair falling from its styling to hide his face a little. Kyungsoo watched for a little longer than he should have, because the alcohol slowed down his reaction time and his decision-making time and because—well, it was hard to look away from. And this was what Joongki said he did. What Luhan said he did. 

He left them there. They’d come out eventually. Well, Bogum did—plopped himself next to Kyungsoo, hair a little mussed and eyes a little glazed. “That modely you know, Soo,” he said, shaking his head a little. “Holy fuck.”

Kyungsoo smiled tightly. “Where is he now?” He asked. He was getting tired and it was late and he figured since they lived in the same apartment he and Jongin could go home together. But not in  _ that  _ way. Just... together. 

Bogum shrugged. “Last I saw he was flirting with that idol from that new group. How the guy got out of his dorm I have no idea, but he deserves his time. Jongin—that’s his name, right? Little slutty, that one.” Bogum sighed, leaning even farther back on the couch and took another drink from one of the endless servers.

Kyungsoo felt his stomach twist. “Be nice, Jesus,” he muttered under his breath. He got up to go find Jongin again. This time he’d pull him away from whatever he was doing and bring him home. Joongki took his vacant seat, though, and his head went close to Bogum’s as they spoke. And he lingered so he could hear what they said. 

“Let me guess, Kim Jongin?” That was Joongki.

Bogum laughed. “Yeah. Shit, dude, you were right. Hopped right on.” 

“That’s how him and Kyungsoo met, you know.”

“Fucking?”

‘Yeah, what else?”

Kyungsoo shook his head and retreated to the other room, his blood boiling. His head felt all mixed up on fire and he felt like he had after the first attack article had come out about him, after his first episode had blown up. He was friends with both of them and it was fine if they knew how he met Jongin. But he knew that wasn’t what was bothering him. 

Jongin wasn’t anywhere in the other room. So Kyungsoo went out into the main club, taking his leather jacket with him so he could slip away without saying goodbye. He’d make things right later. They’d all been drunk. He was a little drunk. 

It took him a long time to find Jongin in the main club. Pressed against a dark wall by someone Kyungsoo didn’t recognize. It was an exclusive club but Kyungsoo didn’t keep up with every B- and C-lister there was. His body looked small, like it was having trouble supporting itself. So different from how it usually did, or how it had this morning, as Jongin had watched him make breakfast from the balcony. The other man was almost holding him up, his arms beneath Jongin’s armpits, his front pressed to Jongin, mouth pressed against Jongin’s lips. Jongin’s eyes were closed. He wasn’t doing much in return. Kyungsoo thought about them—and he’d been trying not to—but Jongin could  _ move.  _ He tapped the man on the shoulder. He wasn’t ugly—strong eyebrows and a full head of hair and a well-done nosejob—but he sneered at Kyungsoo. “Fuck off.”

“I’d like to take my boyfriend home, if you don’t mind. Not sure if you noticed, but he’s plastered.” 

Jongin had opened his eyes again and was looking between them, lids heavy. A chuckle burbled up from him, like he found something funny. 

“So? Sorry buddy, he was kissing some other dude when I first saw him. You should drop him now.” The stranger raised an eyebrow.

“No.” Kyungsoo’s voice had the ring of finality and he moved between them, taking Jongin’s hand and willing the model to just  _ not say anything _ . Jongin wasn’t actually that drunk, but he dipped his gaze demurely and mumbled something that sounded like an apology, to Kyungsoo or the stranger Kyungsoo wasn’t sure. Either way, the man seemed to give up and let Kyungsoo drag a stumbling Jongin out of the club. 

The night air bit harshly at Kyungsoo’s face and Jongin was in a thin black dress shirt. He shivered as they stopped a block or so away from the entrance, doubling over. His stomach heaved but nothing came from his mouth except a thin stream of saliva. Kyungsoo took off his jacket and draped it over Jongin’s shoulders, calling a cab.

They didn’t speak until they’d been driving for four or five minutes. “I wasn’t  _ plastered.”  _ Jongin didn’t sound too slurred either.

“I know.” Kyungsoo’s voice echoed low in the cabin. “I just wanted to go home. And that would have sounded kind of weak.”

“You could have left me there.”

“Did you want me to leave you there?” Kyungsoo had no idea why he thought he knew the answer to that question. He was Jongin’s friend for a week and his only job was not to judge. But it was hard when his friends were doing that for him. 

“I’m sorry,” Jongin said eventually, slumping. He looked small, pressed against his side of the taxi. So different from the first night Kyungsoo had taken him home. “It was your party and I spent the whole time...” he swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Kyungsoo replied firmly. “I was just tired, that’s all.”

They were silent until they got to his apartment. And then as Kyungsoo went to go into his bedroom, Jongin said, “You know how I said I don’t starve myself for shows?” Kyungsoo turned back towards the model, who stood hunch-shouldered in the doorway. Echoing the night he’d shown up with nothing. 

“Yeah?”

“I lied.” Jongin walked into the apartment, toeing off his shoes, and Kyungsoo didn’t miss the moment when he lost his balance and had to overcorrect. The model fell onto the couch and then silence echoed into the apartment. Kyungsoo stood there a second, in the middle of his apartment, moonlight streaming through the balcony door onto the back of the couch. Only Jongin’s bare foot was visible on the end. 

He licked his lips. “You must hate yourself so much it hurts,” he said quietly, finally moving into the kitchen and retrieving  a cup of ramen. Jongin didn’t hear him.

* * *

 

Jongin was revived by the smell of noodles. He looked to his side, his chest pressed against the velvet of Kyungoo’s couch, into two big, dark eyes. And he had to shut his tightly again. He didn’t want to look into those eyes. When he lifted his eyelids again Kyungsoo was gone and there was a steaming bowl of noodles beside the couch. Cautiously, Jongin reached out for the food and sat up, taking a dainty first bite. It wasn’t too hot but it hit his empty stomach hard, and he knew if he ate this too fast he’d be barfing in the bathroom in no time. He didn’t hear Kyungsoo in the kitchen. 

Eating. Then finally he looked up and saw Kyungsoo on the balcony, legs drawn up on the chair there, eyes on the glowing screen of his phone. He smiled. He so rarely got to observe Kyungsoo candidly. After a few minutes Kyungsoo looked up and Jongin was looking at him and they had a brief moment of eye contact and Jongin smiled tentatively. Kyungsoo responded with a big, encouraging smile, his eyes scrunching up and Jongin’s stomach clenched. When he was done, Kyungsoo came in and took his bowl and replaced it with some water and sat back down by the edge of the couch where he’d been before.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Better. Shouldn’t have gone out after the show. I don’t usually do that.”

Kyungsoo frowned. “Why this time then?”

Jongin shifted on the couch. “Because you texted me to come?” He said it like he was unsure if it was a valid answer. But Kyungsoo just laughed, a little incredulously. “I really do wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.”

“I’m sorry. I know you just wanted to hang out with friends.”

“You said sorry already. You don’t need to more than once. I’m the one who wanted to leave, remember?”

“Yes.”

“So. End of discussion.” Kyungsoo got up from the floor and seemed like he was going back to his room. 

“Kyungsoo?” Jongin heard the actor’s footsteps stop, and he twisted to look at him. 

“Yeah?”

“Are  _ you  _ okay?” Jongin thought about last night. He thought about what going to sleep tonight was going to be like if it was the same way.

Kyungsoo seemed thrown by the question. “Yeah, of course. I’m good. Really.” He smiled again. He  _ looked  _ content. “It was a good party. Woobin’s really happy about the drama, and about it being over, I think. I’m staying over at Joongki’s next week.”

Jongin grinned at the name. “Have I ever told you about the time I—”

Kyungsoo held up his hand. “Maybe when we’ve been friends for a little longer, Jongin. Good night.”

“Good night, hyung.”

Kyungsoo returned into his room. But Jongin still heard the sniffling. He resolved if it happened tomorrow night, he would definitely ask about it. They had to be close enough for him to ask. 

***

That morning they both woke up late and Jongin got coffee for Kyungsoo again and it was like last night never happened. Jongin went straight for the shower, muttering something about leaving his makeup on. He seemed stressed about it. Kyungsoo resolved to keep himself to the kitchen and leave the model to his privacy. 

Jongin’s phone dinged while he was in the shower, though. And like always, Jongin didn’t have a lock on it. It was a text from an unknown number and Kyungsoo choked a little on his coffee when he read it. 

[You should really die for the shit you’ve caused, slut.]

Kyungsoo had received death threats before, of course. They’d spiked after the episode when he kissed the lead in his drama. It was actually fairly mundane, as death threats went, except—it was on his personal cell phone. Meaning someone who had Jongin’s number had given it to someone who hated him so much they’d had the audacity to send him a death threat. In the  _ morning,  _ Kyungsoo thought. 

He deleted the text. But when Jongin came out of the shower, hair dripping a little and sweatpants hanging low on his hips, Kyungsoo just smiled at him distractedly. Jongin smiled back and popped a blueberry into his mouth and went back into the bathroom. Kyungsoo sat on his stool and thought. He thought about how he’d told his mom he didn’t need therapy because he’d never encounter a gun again. Thought about the way Jongin threw himself around in the world.

Then he realized that Jongin had been in the bathroom with the door open for along time and sighed, hoping he wasn’t jacking off again and this time he’d just forgotten to close the door. Instead, Jongin was standing in front of Kyungsoo’s large mirror, shoulders pulled back—not hunched like he often was—and he was turning in small increments studying himself. It looked... funny.

“What in the world are you doing now?”

Jongin looked over at him, then back at the mirror. “Working.”

“You’re looking at yourself in the mirror.”

“I’m a model. It’s actually something we have to spend more time doing than most people. I’m not inspecting my pores, or anything. Just angles and shit. Practice.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“...forgot you worked.”

“Again?” Jongin sounded exasperated. “Well, I don’t have anything coming up for the rest of the week, that should make you happy. At least, not anything I actually have to show up in person for. Maybe a meeting at the agency.”

“Oh.” It had a different inflection than the last  _ Oh.  _

“ _ What _ ?” Jongin turned to him, eyes wide and lips hanging a little open. 

“I don’t have anything today. Shooting a scene or three tonight, though. You should come. I remember you were asking me about acting. You might find it interesting.”  _ And you might not go out tonight that way. _ Kyungsoo kept the last part to himself.

Jongin’s eyes had lit up at the mention of a shoot. Kyungsoo smiled stupidly at him through the mirror in victory. 

***

Jongin’s breath fogged, illuminated by the huge lights that let the viewers see at night. Truly it wasn’t that cold, and Kyungsoo wondered what temperature it really had to be for breath to fog. In any case Jongin was talking to someone and Kyungsoo was supposed to be distressed—dealing with an inner turmoil that had something to do with a missed reconciliation with his older sister. Then his love interest would sit next to him and they would knock shoulders and he would magically feel better. He could already tell it was going to require more than a few takes: his costar was young and distracted today, however polite.

But he got breaks and they only had a few scenes to film so it only took a few hours. His first break he looked for Jongin and Jongin looked for him. Jongin asked him what everything was and Kyungsoo explained everything and Jongin looked like he was wishing for a notebook. Jongin almost followed him onto set: there was a thick cable separating the filming area from the crew area and he caught himself, his foot hovering above the cable, trembling slightly. His jaw clenched and he lowered it behind the cable and when he looked back at Kyungsoo he gave him a tight-lipped smile.

The second break Kyungsoo looked for Jongin but couldn’t find him. But it was a short break and not much had changed so he chatted with his costar about the weather and watched the stars sparkle in her eyes. She had a career ahead of her too, probably. She was nice. He hoped they remained friends. 

The third break Kyungsoo was tired so he stayed in his seat and didn’t look for Jongin. He was tired so his tired brain pessimistically thought about whatever flavor of the night Jongin had picked out from set, on-camera or off camera; there were plenty of attractive boys who’d be open to a Jongin, if a Jongin set his sights on them. Kyungsoo thought about that until he saw Jongin giggling with a produce in the corner, where the lights couldn’t illuminate his breath, and then he didn’t want to think about it anymore. 

Then he was done filming, and Jongin was nowhere to be found and Kyungsoo could feel the exhaustion leftover from his character—who hadn’t had sleep in far too long—sinking into the pits of his eyes. 

“Kyungsoo.”

The producer lingered in the background, but Jongin had his hands shoved deep into his pockets, like he was pushing back against something inside himself. Kyungsoo just stared at him. He didn’t owe him anything.

“Kyungsoo, you’re done. Did you want to leave, or—or do you want. Do you, um, want me t-to...” He was so unsure. When Kyungsoo said nothing more Jongin turned, more jerkily than he ever had, and the producer squared his shoulders, excited.

“Let’s get ice cream.”

Jongin turned back at Kyungsoo’s soft voice. The actor’s expression hadn’t changed and he still slouched in his seat but he turned his eyes toward the model expectantly, waiting for his response.

“Ice cream?”

“Yeah.”

“You know a—you know a place?”

“Yeah.”

In ten minutes they were sitting in the back of  _ Minho’s _ , squished onto a bench beneath a harshly bright fluorescent light. But it still felt like nighttime in their bodies and out the window in the light blue door where the orange streetlight shone a pool of light on Kyungsoo’s jeep. 

“I thought you might go with that producer.”

“I did too.” Jongin smiled at something. Like he was proud of himself. He had a cone of chocolate ice cream and it was too late so Kyungsoo was blatantly watching his lips as he ate it. He could always blame it on being sleepy. And Jongin was watching his lips too so he could always yell at him in turn. 

“You were looking at me and I felt like a friend would... I don’t know.” Jongin shook his head like he didn’t know what he meant. Kyungsoo thought whatever it was it was probably sweet anyway. Then, to his surprise, Jongin tried again. “Is there anything... anything bothering you? I might get out but I don’t tell secrets, you know.”

Kyungsoo frowned. “No. Why are you so worried about me? You’re the homeless one.”

Jongin smiled but didn’t laugh like Kyungsoo expected. “True.”

“Do you get death threats a lot?” It was out of the blue but it had been stewing in Kyungsoo for a while and he couldn’t just let this man sit next him with this vast ocean of things that happened to him concealed by light conversation and nothing exchanged of import. 

Jongin blinked at him. Looked ahead of him, at the work schedule for the ice cream shop. The sound of Minho up front doing things with the display could be heard faintly. “Occasionally.”

“Jongin, I...”

“It’s really okay.”

“It’s really not.”

“Well. Good to know—I’ll get right on it.”

They were quiet for a moment. Kyungsoo felt a frustration with the model, like he wanted to shake him, and he was just about to turn to him, to knock his ice cream out of his hand and do  _ something,  _ when Jongin stood abruptly. “Gotta smoke,” he said quietly.

Kyungsoo took them home after he was done with his cigarette so it wouldn’t stink up the car too much. Their moving around was loud, like the volume was turned up in earphones as they entered Kyungsoo’s apartment: designer shoes shuffling on wood floor, keys being dropped on a small side table, jackets being shrugged off.

“Why do you smoke?” Kyungsoo asked him. He hoped it wasn’t as much of a disaster question as the death threat one—Jongin was still sulking. 

It was. Jongin’s mouth twitched and his nose scrunched a little bit and he ran his hand through his hair. “I smoke,” he growled, “because I can. And I  _ quit _ because I can. Ever do something just because you can? Just for that very reason? Because you can?” The honey in his voice was booming, it was flowing around the apartment and flooding it and filling it up and Kyungsoo wanted to nod his head and agree except he didn’t understand. Jongin scoffed, taking out another cigarette pointedly. “Of course you don’t. You’re an actor.” Like that explained everything. Like being an actor was the pinnacle of being able to do anything and if he could be an actor he wouldn’t feel the need to control anything else in his life. 

There was one thing he was stuck on. “You quit, too?”

“Goodnight, Kyungsoo.” Jongin was done being interrogated, so Kyungsoo just added it to the long list of mysteries this model kept locked away. 

When the last day of Jongin’s stay came—the seventh day—it all came bursting forth, anyway.

* * *

Author's note: there's the first full chapter! Leave lots of comments of what you think—I think there are probably more questions left unanswered than questions answered.


	4. Missing

When Kyungsoo got home on the fifth day, he knew the day was not going to be spent on the couch with his computer on his lap and a movie on. Instead, his home seemed, rather dramatically to him, like some dystopian wasteland destroyed by a tornado of dickish thieves.

He’d been broken into. Apartments in his building  _ never  _ got broken into.

He turned on his heel the moment he saw his apartment and the tipped-over couch and the crooked television and the broken dishes and the disarrayed books. He went down to the main desk and told them that someone had broken into his apartment.

The girl at the desk looked back at him with wide, empty eyes. “You mean like a criminal?” She asked.

“Can I see your supervisor? Talk to the manager? Or actually—” Kyungsoo turned away and pulled out his phone, dialing the police. Then he hung up—the police attracted the attention of the public. The inconviences of being famous. Turned to the supervisor, who the little artificially blonde girl had scurried to fetch.

“Mr. Do, it’s come to my attention you believe someone has broken into your apartment. I can assure you only someone with the code or with the override key can enter the apartment—”

“Excuse me, the door was knocked through. I don’t know if your alert system is fucked up or if you make it a habit of not telling people they’ve been broken into but either way it seems like you have a problem as well as me. But I  _ do  _ have a problem. And I want it  _ fixed.” _

“Of course, Mr. Do, we’ll cover the expenses. Why don’t I come up with you.”

Kyungsoo shoved a hand through his hair, trying to calm his heart. Jongin would come home in a few hours, and something told Kyungsoo that Jongin couldn’t see the disaster that was his apartment right now.

When they got back to the apartment, the door was still hanging off its hinges and the couch was still tipped over, but the television was straight where it hadn’t been before. Kyungsoo’s hand shot out to stop the manager from advancing onto the glass of the broken coffee table.

They heard a clink from inside Kyungsoo’s bedroom. Both froze. For a few tense moments, neither breathed and no gust of air entered the apartment from the open balcony door. Then a figure emerged from the bedroom with a black ski mask on. Kyungsoo’s height, he was indistinguishable as an individual, except that he was relatively in shape, and he carried nothing on his person. In his hand he held what looked like heavy steel revolver.

Kyungsoo didn’t move, and neither did the manager, but the stranger raised the gun immediately, his steps becoming less careless. Kyungsoo could feel his hands starting to get clammy and his mouth felt like a desert. He could feel himself shaking and he willed himself still, hoped the stranger couldn’t see through the rediculous cotton on his face. The stranger kept the dark, shining barrel of the gun pointed at them as he sidled past them, leaving the couch tipped over. The patter of his boots could be heard in the doorway outside but they stayed inside for a solid five minutes afterwards, quiet, looking about them.

The manager was the first to speak. “We’ll reimburse you.”

“I need this cleaned up, first.”

“This is a crime scene. We’ll call a discreet officer to come take a few pictures first and then we’ll absolutely have a crew come in to do whatever you need.” The manager, a tall, well-put-together man with slicked-back hair, looked pale himself.

“Thank you.” Kyungsoo didn’t have the heart to yell at him, or to hurry him into getting the place cleaned up before Jongin came. The manager nodded and moved to the other side of the couch. Together they righted it, and then the manager left, leaving Kyungsoo alone. The breeze from the open balcony door felt foreign, and Kyungsoo suddenly had the almost painfully strong wish that Jongin was standing there on that balcony, long body draped over the railing, smoke drifting from his lips. He wanted it so bad he could almost see it.

Instead, his legs finally gave way and he lost the image, sitting not on the couch but on the floor and resting his back against it. Instead of Jongin he saw the gun, the barrel staring him down, getting bigger and bigger. Shutting his eyes didn’t help but he didn’t want to cry now, and he didn’t want his bed, or anything else. Maybe he wanted  _ someone.  _ But instead, he just sat in silence until the police officer walked through the door and he had to stand and pretend everything was quite alright.

Jongin came home later than he’d said he would that night, but not late enough to indicate that he’d stayed with someone, or even that he’d fucked someone. He looked happy, satisfied, until he walked into an apartment full of people cleaning, and a half-drunk Kyungsoo sitting on the couch, arms resting on the back, staring at a blank television.

“Kyungsoo, the fuck?” The staff looked up at his entrance but they were well-trained; they looked away quickly and worked twice as fast and it made Kyungsoo smirk.

“Don’t worry,” Kyungsoo replied, gesturing Jongin forward with a crook of his finger. “They’ll be gone shortly.”

Jongin blushed, looking around himself self-consciously, like he was worried Kyungsoo sounded suggestive. “What-t happened?”

“Break-in. Didn’t think it happened in this building but apparently it does. Except the dumb fucker was still here when I got back so he didn’t even take anything with him.”

Jongin’s expression had undergone a rapid change and now he’d drawn that curtain over it, so that his jaw was clenched firmly and his eyes were hard and steely. Kyungsoo wanted to punch it off his face sometimes. “I’m glad you’re okay,” Jongin said quietly, his voice thin for once.

“Well, you know. I’m over it.” Kyungsoo smiled tightly. “How was your day?” And Jongin sat next to him as activity swirled around them, and Kyungsoo took a deep breath for the first time that day.

***

“Jongin, you have to get up sometime.” Kyungsoo’s voice was exasperated and faint, sounding from across the apartment.

Jongin grumbled and pulled the comforter farther over his head, Monggu wobbling from his position laying on his back. “Fine, starve.” Kyungsoo kept mumbling to himself and Jongin heard clinking in the kitchen. Usually he’d get up and eat with his friend, but today his head pounded and he couldn’t be compelled to.

Not that Kyungsoo would know. He’d gone out without the actor last night, and slept in an actual bed—though who’s he couldn’t remember. But he’d remembered his rules and it had felt like salvation and he’d gotten back to Kyungsoo’s at the comfortable hour of five a.m., when the sun was just thinking about peeking over the clean lines of the skyscrapers. The city was calm at that time of day; the only people moving were the responsible ones: the ones with rules, like him. Except most of them were the types who rose early to read the paper and drink orange juice and work out. Jongin worked out later in the day because it was his job.

He also had the annoying ghost of a hangover.

He told Kyungsoo none of these things, just listened to him get ready to go film. He startled Monggu to jumping off him when he next heard Kyungsoo’s voice next to his ear, a louder velvet. “Today is the sixth day, you know,” the actor said. “Maybe spend the day making sure you have somewhere to go tomorrow?” Jongin was too tired to listen for the twinge of regret in his voice.

He heard Kyungsoo sigh again and stand up. Pad over to the door, heard the door shut. Only then did he peek his head out of the sheets.

Kyungsoo received the text when he was halfway down the stairs and he laughed out loud.

[stay in tonight], it said, [today is the sixth day, you know.]

***

Jongin was smoking when Kyungsoo got home. The sun was just starting to go down and it glittered across the skin his sleeveless top exposed and he turned to watch Kyungsoo deposit his groceries on the kitchen counter, his eyes barely visible through the glass door of the balcony.

He came in once Kyungsoo started cooking.

“You smoke an awful lot.” Kyungsoo commented.

“I have to make up for all those weeks in my life when I don’t.” Jongin smiled. “Tell me something, you’ve gotta have some nice liquor in here somewhere, right?”

“Did you find where you’re going to stay tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“How very convincing.”

“Well? What is it, wine, vodka? Whiskey?”

“There’s wine over there.” Kyungsoo gestured towards the corner of the apartment where the chest of wine was. He liked wine a lot, and when his friends slept over—which he’d made sure they hadn’t, this week—it was filled and emptied with startling speed.

Jongin let out a delighted whoop when he opened it, a devilish smile on his face as he brought not one but two bottles of red wine back with him.

“I’m surprised you haven’t found it already.”

Jongin’s smile faded a little bit. “I would never go through your stuff, dude.” He looked completely sincere, his eyes shining a little bit, and Kyungsoo’s mouth melted into a small smile.

“I believe you. I don’t know, it would have been okay, though. I wouldn’t have been mad.”

“Well, I don’t drink during the day anyway. Alcohol is a lot of calories, you know.”

“It can’t be much past six right now.”

Jongin shrugged. “Close enough. Isn’t five happy hour?” He fetched a wine glass from its cabinet with fluid ease, like he’d lived in Kyungsoo’s apartment his whole life. “What a name for it, ‘happy hour’. I’ve known as many sad drunks as happy drunks. But maybe that’s a side effect of the profession. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never known another job.”

“I can totally see you being a beautiful child, too.” Kyungsoo was still smiling as he chopped pepper, meaning it as a compliment, but Jongin flinched a little bit, pouring his glass beyond half full and then pouring a much more modest amount for Kyungsoo.

“Do you want to know my plan? I’ll tell you what it really is, my buddy my friend my pal,” Jongin said, swishing the wine before taking a big sip and coughing once, looking happier already.

“Sure.”

“I’m going to get really drunk. I don't want to hear anything about what I said before. You know me, you’ve been trying to loosen my tongue for the past week and it’s been like using a bulldozer on tiny screws. I won’t budge unless I’m a little oiled.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, I guess I should drink with you, then.” Kyungsoo took a drink of his wine. Jongin watched with wide eyes. Kyungsoo remembered their first conversation. He looked so innocent with his eyes wide like that. Innocence with red-stained lips.

“Really? I was expecting you to take it all away. I was half expecting... I don’t know, waterboarding, torture until I spilled my intestines out.”

“I’m not evil.”

“Evil is relative.”

“Not always, Jongin.” Kyungsoo frowned. “Some things are evil. Hitler was evil. I promise I’m not evil. But I can’t figure out why I have to convince you of that.”

“I’m sure you have it in you.” Jongin flicked lazy eyes up at the actor and swiveled in his seat. “Anyway, let’s talk about  _ good  _ things, or even nothing at all. You’re good at that. So many actors think that because they’re good at talking—because it’s their profession, or whatever—they have to talk  _ all  _ the time.”

“Sounds like it would hurt your throat,” Kyungsoo replied. “Here, you go put on some music. Dinner won’t take long.”

Jongin discovered Kyungsoo could sing that day. Kyungsoo had been keeping it a secret because his singing was typically accompanied by gasps and oohs and aahs and demands that he spontaneously come out with a rendition of his favorite showtune. But Jongin just sat on his stool, eating crackers, listening to Kyungsoo sing with a strange, quiet expression plastered on his face.

It might also have been because he’d had at least three glasses of wine by the time they were halfway through dinner. He did say, multiple times, that Kyungsoo’s voice sounded like “what I want to hear when I die.” Then he’d slur: “Like you know those clouds you’re supposed to see when you die? In all the religions there’s always clouds. Your voice is like the clouds.” His hair was sticking in every direction and his sweatpants had only fallen lower on  his hips all night.

Dinner was over too quickly and Kyungsoo realized he’d spent the whole time enjoying Jongin like this: drunk but his, quiet but paying attention to him. He’d never thought of himself as selfish before but now he thought maybe he was. But he knew in the morning it was going to be the seventh day and Jongin was going to leave. He remembered what they’d said to each other that first night when they’d been giddy together and hadn’t realized anything.  _ See you never.  _ Could he really see Jongin? Would Jongin ever let him?

“Jongin.” He said it quietly and Jongin looked up at him from the floor (he’d decided that standing up from his seat at the table was too much trouble—much easier to simply lower himself to the carpet). Now his eyes were wide and innocent again. Kyungsoo swore silently to himself; he could never keep up. He couldn’t interrogate this man. Jongin looked like his favorite thing in the world was the ground on which he sat.

“Kyungsoo.” Jongin didn’t slur his name. Instead, it escaped his lips melodically, like a prayer, and Jongin’s face was tipped upwards so he could look at the actor and so the light from the dim lamp could spill across his features and make shadows beneath his eyelashes and cheekbones. “Are you gonna cry again tonight?” He stretched long arms toward him, articulate fingers grabbing at empty air, towing Kyungsoo across the apartment towards him. “I don’t want you to cry again tonight.” When Kyungsoo came to him, he caught Kyungsoo’s hand and squeezed it hard, still looking straight at the actor, mouth open slightly. Then he pouted, tugging at Kyungsoo’s hand until Kyungsoo fell and sat behind him.

Kyungsoo swallowed thickly. “I thought tonight was supposed to be your interrogation. Not mine.”

Jongin swayed from his seat on the floor. “But I’m your friend,” he insisted, still pouting. “I’m your friend so I have to make you feel better, right? I can’t fail at that, too.”

“You could never fail at that.” Kyungsoo’s voice broke. “I... it’s not really because I’m unhappy. You shouldn’t worry about it. I just have some memories. Some nasty ones. You shouldn’t worry, Nini.” He was in comforting mode, and his hand had moved to the warm nape of Jongin’s neck like it needed supporting.

Jongin gave a hiccup of a giggle. “Nini,” he repeated. “It’s been a long time since somebody’s called me that.”

“Sorry. Slipped out I guess. Jongin.”

“No! No no no no I like it.” Jongin’s forefinger played with Kyungsoo’s bottom lip and Kyungsoo’s stomach tightened a little. “I have to try harder not to kiss you but I like it. I like it when you say Jongin too. I like it when you say”

“...When I say what?” Kyungsoo watched as Jongin’s eyes came back from being glassy, fuzzily amused.

“When you say.” Jongin’s lips jutted out. “Just when you say. When you speak? Talk? Verbalize? Enunciate? Elocute?”

“Well aren’t we just the walking thesaurus?”

“Nah, I couldn’t walk right now. I usually have perfect control of my body, though. I’m a great model, you know.” Kyungsoo expected him to say it proudly, but instead it was a mournful aside, like the thought of modelling saddened Jongin.

Kyungsoo stood, making an executive decision. “Well, you should sleep then. We can talk in the morning.”

“No!” Jongin shook his head, stretching out his arms again, his hair flying about his head adorably. “I don’t want to hear you cry again. Take me with you.”

“What, to bed? Jongin, I thought we already said—”

“I’m not gonna fuck you, you dummy.”

“Oh.”

They faced each other for a moment, and then Kyungsoo caved, moving forward again, into Jongin’s warmth, sliding his arms under the model’s back and knees and picking him up. Jongin immediately locked his arms around Kyungsoo’s neck and giggled into his shoulder as he was carried to the bedroom.

When they got inside, and Jongin was safely laid onto the bed, Kyungsoo realized Jongin had never been inside the bedroom, if his un-snoopiness was true to character. It was sleek and monochromatic and the bed was enormous. The window was huge as well, but since it was evening, a large blackout shade had lowered over it so that a warm lamp lit the space. It was the room where Kyungsoo spent the bonus checks he got for good ratings.

He’d been getting more bonus checks recently.

Jongin waited patiently—and surprisingly quietly—as Kyungsoo tugged off his nicer shirt and pulled on his soft cotton t-shirt he wore to bed. He left his pants on; they were comfortable jeans, and all his sweatpants were either in the wash or on Jongin. When he finally slipped under the fluffy black comforter, he’d almost forgotten Jongin was there until the model slipped his arm over his stomach and rested his head on his shoulder, pinning him on his back. Kyungsoo went rigid for a second but relaxed quickly; it was a comfortable position, and he could feel Jongin relaxed and warm against him.

“I went to church once, you know,” Jongin said. Kyungsoo could feel the vibrations in his chest echoing through his body. “Recently, I mean. I don’t know what I expected. I thought people talk about it so much there must be something in it. It was good. They talked about being nice to people and they had some nice stories. But then the preacher started talking about us homosexuals.” He sighed. “It’s not important, anyway. I smoked a pack a day this week. I think I’ll quit tomorrow, since that’s the day I leave.”

“Why do you do that?”

“I... it makes me feel like a fucking king. That I can start something that addicting, and then quit. And feel it in my gut and in my brain and ignore it. I’m addicted to resisting addiction. But you won’t believe me; nobody ever does. Everyone just thinks I smoke in secret.”

“I think you could quit smoking whenever you wanted.”

“You won’t cry now that I’m here, right?” Jongin wasn’t looking at him; instead his cheek rested on Kyungsoo’s chest, the tips of his toes hanging off the bed.

“Oh, probably not; I usually don’t when there’s people around.” Jongin didn’t respond, like he was waiting for more of an explanation. “Oh, I told you why I cry. It’s memories. It’s not a big deal and—and you shouldn’t worry.”

“People don’t usually make it a regular habit to cry over memories. Was it a boy? Or... a girl?”

“No.” Kyungsoo licked his lips, his fingers running comforting lines up and down Jongin’s arm. “Nothing like that, Nini.”

Jongin kept his silence again. For a while, Kyungsoo just listened to it. But it had been a long time, and he was a lot better. So eventually he opened his mouth again. “It’s to do with my parents.”

“Oh.” There was another spell of silence. “Luhan told you I was a whore, didn’t he?”

“Is that what you think he told me? Is that what you were so afraid to say?” Kyungsoo shifted, trying to look down at Jongin. But Jongin refused to make eye contact.

“Well, that’s what half the death threats are about, aren’t they? It’s not untrue.” Jongin’s voice wavered dangerously, and Kyungsoo decided he couldn’t go any longer without seeing Jongin’s face. He tucked his fingers beneath the model’s chin and brought his face to tilt upwards, using no small amount of force. When Jongin finally submitted, he squeezed his eyes shut like he was ashamed of the tears that stained his cheeks.

“It  _ is  _ untrue.” Kyungsoo couldn’t think of anything else to say; he knew it wasn’t enough, could see the expectation dying in Jongin’s eyes. Could see that Jongin had been told that before and how powerful the opposite phrase was. So he said, “You can stay for as long as you want, Jongin. I only said seven days because I wasn’t sure—people aren’t sure, usually, when they let people into their homes. But you can stay as long as you want to.”

“That’s something you have to say because you’re my friend and I’m crying and more broken than you expected me to be.” Jongin was still trying to look away, straining against Kyungsoo’s hand under his chin.

“You’re not broken. I’ve seen broken and I’ve been broken. You’re just battered.”

“I don’t know how much longer I can stand it.”

“Stand what, the death threats?”

“The battering.”

“That’s rather vague.”

Jongin finally got free of Kyungsoo’s hand and buried his face in his side. “I-I can’t just tell you everything at once. I’m fuzzy and I can’t even do that. It’ll break me. I’m bending a lot but I don’t want to break. Only some of the people I’ve known really didn’t like me and they have my phone number.” He gave a shuddering sigh.

“Why don’t you just change it?”

Jongin gave a self-deprecating shrug. Kyungsoo remembered something he’d muttered to himself, days ago, staring at him spread out on the couch, starved and wasting away.  _ You must hate yourself so much it hurts. _

It had been some time and Kyungsoo was almost positive Jongin was asleep. Moonlight slid into the room through the sides of the blackout shades and flit across his knuckles as they rested on Jongin’s shoulders and he let himself entertain, in that small pocket of darkened stillness, a world in which this was normal, and they did this to comfort each other as more than friends. The alarm clock on the side table read that it was one a.m., so technically, it was the seventh day—the day Jongin was supposed to leave. It glowed a dim blue like a reminder of the real world.

“I wish you wouldn’t cry, hyung.” Jongin’s voice was barely there, barely a rumble in his chest. “Your laugh is so much prettier.” And then he lapsed into silence, and presently his breathing became even, and then Kyungsoo felt his eyelids getting heavy. He was mostly asleep when Jongin shifted in his sleep and threw a leg over Kyungsoo’s hip, enveloping him in a human warmth, and he didn’t bother to move him.

When he stirred the next morning, the sheets had a chill over them, and Jongin was gone.

***

The rules had gotten him to here. The rules had served him until now and the rules would serve him forever; they had to. Jongin’s head pounded as he stumbled out of Kyungsoo’s apartment with his things, back and forth, the taxi driver dozing in the front seat, on the last legs of his shift. When Monggu was finally situated in his crate and Jongin collapsed into the back seat, the man turned to him, his five o’clock shadow catching the light of the sun that was beginning to peek over the horizon of Kyungsoo’s road.

“Where to?”

Jongin looked up at the actor’s apartment building. It rose like a great glass monument to everything he had never known he could have and never would. The avenue was empty of cars; nobody was on the road before five a.m. on a weekend. He could go anywhere. “Anywhere.”

“I’ll take you to the train station, how’s that.” The taxi driver looked like he might snigger if he had more energy, but as it was he just looked Jongin up and down with a sigh. They were comrades in the time of day, in their opposition to the sun and in the heaviness of their bodies. Besides, Jongin couldn’t be doing a classic walk of shame with three suitcases and two dogs. It had to be more.

Jongin shut his eyes as the taxi pulled away.  _ The rules had gotten him here.  _ He hadn’t booked his next job yet and he could take one anywhere after seoul fashion week. Besides, Paris fashion week was coming up and he’d been planning to work that anyway.

At the train station, he stored the things he didn’t need in a locker so he only needed to take two suitcases, and then he bought a ticket to Gangnam. Jjangu and Monggu were quiet, like they could feel when their noise was unwanted.

“Jongin?” The door to the apartment before which Jongin stood was a solid, heavy oak, with an ornate brass knocker and a fancy doorbell: options. Jongin had always enjoyed using the knocker; he hated hearing the sound of the doorbell inside the apartment, like his own presence being announced. The downside to knocking was that no one else did it, therefore his parents always knew when it was he who was visiting.

“Hi, mom.”

“Jongin, I didn’t know you woke up at this time on the weekends.”

“I need to go to paris to work, mom. I was wondering if you could watch Monggu and Jjangu for a while.”

“Jongin.” Jongin’s mother was a small woman, with expressive eyes but a stout body. Somehow she still looked down at him disapprovingly. “Isn’t Jjangah at Uncle Jinki’s? You’re the one who wanted these dogs, you know. They’re a responsibility.”

“I know, this is work.” Jongin ground his teeth, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his long wool jacket. “This is modelling. It’s the most prestigious place a model can go to work. Especially an asian model.”

“Well, when you put it like that.” The corners of her eyes crinkled a little and she crossed her arms, looking at him like she was appraising a successful work of art. “As you should do, as you should. I expected nothing less. Of course, we’ll watch the things for you. They’re no trouble, usually. We have a big apartment, we just keep them in a few rooms.”

“Thanks.” Jongin kept his jaw tightly locked. “I really appreciate it. I should be going, though.”

“You should at least stay for tea, Jongin-ah! Don’t be rude! Your father isn’t even out of bed!”

“That’s alright. I’ll call him later. I’ll miss my train. Really.”

“You’re prettier than the last time I saw you, I swear.” His mom shook her head, grey-black hair swinging around her face. “But you should sleep more, or else take those vitamin shake things—you’ve got those circles under your eyes and those aren’t very attractive. I hope you put makeup on before you go to bookings.”

“I book jobs just fine, mom.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do. Prettier than the last time I saw you. Didn’t I always tell you you were going to make a spectacular model?”

“You always did.” Jongin’s feet felt hot from standing in the same place for so long. “I really will miss my train.”

“Okay. Go. Wave to me if you get on TV.” Her voice sounded older, Jongin couldn’t help noticing. But he was off down the hallway. He’d said bye to the dogs on the train.

***

He kept his apartment cold, Kyungsoo realized. Last night he’d been warmer than usual but it hadn’t been unpleasant. It had been the kind of warmth that reminded him that he was human—or rather, that there was another person right there next to him, sleeping with him. Quietly. And he hadn’t cried because the memories hadn’t come back and he hadn’t had to relive it.

He accidentally made too many eggs that morning. He made enough for two and he drank coffee even though he didn’t usually because Jongin liked coffee and it had been ready last night. So he was left sitting at the kitchen counter with Jongin’s coffee and Jongin’s eggs and it had only been a week but it felt like a roommate or maybe something else had moved out.

His co-star, Dayoung, noticed something off and pulled him aside after their first no-go scene, her small hand on his arm steady and cool. “Is this about the offer?” She spoke in hushed tones, like they were talking about something confidential. They stood in the semi-lit space off camera, chords underfoot and producers bustling around.

“What offer?” Kyungsoo looked at her, puzzled.

Dayoung looked at him blankly. “For  _ Flight to Gwangju.  _ You’re who they want for the lead. It’s all anyone’s talking about. It’s a wonder, actually, that it hasn’t hit the papers already. I thought you knew.”

Kyungsoo swallowed. “ _ Flight to Gwangju?  _ The action movie? The thriller?” He knew he was acting strangely and he tried not to resent the fact that he could see it reflected in Dayoung’s wide, concerned eyes.

“Yeah. There’s a lot of great heat on you right now, Kyungsoo.” She smiled up at him. Her eyes did that thing underneath them that made her seem kind. “On you and me both. And this is almost over. It’s a great opportunity. You have no reason to feel badly about it.”

“I don’t—” Kyungsoo ran a frustrated hand through his hair and noticed Dayoung’s eyes following his hand. He sighed. “I don’t feel badly about it, Dayoung. That’s not it at all. I wish you wouldn’t worry so much about me.”

“Well, I’m not sure you can help how much I worry.”

Kyungsoo chuckled. The lighting was dappled here, like they were in a forest instead of on set, so only half her face, in shifting patterns, was lit. “Yes, you’re right. Well, what do you plan to do?”

Dayoung opened her mouth, about to respond.

“Actors on set please!” Their manager found them. He was a short, mousey man who seemed to revel in the power of being able to tell famous people what to do all day. Dayoung looked down, closing her mouth, a smile twitching on her lips. For a moment, Kyungsoo wasn’t thinking about Jongin: he wanted to know what she’d been about to say. Instead he followed her back to his fake apartment to profess his fake love to her.

He was in fact left quite alone that night. No producers or directors calling him offering positions and his managers left him alone, too. He went to bed early, and Jongin’s voice echoed in his head, calling him a grandpa.

That night he relived it again and clutched his comforter so tightly his nails pierced his skin on the other side of his comforter, trying to keep his vibrating body from crying, wondering where Jongin’s voice had gone  _ now.  _ But eventually, like always, he drifted into a quiet sleep.

_ They were out on the balcony, and Jongin had that glint in his eyes and it reflected the moon or maybe it was the universe or maybe it was just Kyungsoo, because they were so close he couldn’t feel anything except Jongin so maybe Jongin was the universe. His thighs wrapped around Kyungsoo and his arms were linked around his neck and that was all that was keeping the model from tipping backwards off the balcony into the depths of the city. _

_ Neither of them cared: Jongin’s mouth was soft and firm and insistent and plush and warm and alive and Kyungsoo pushed him farther back into nothingness, taking as much of his mouth as he could and then more, crowding Jongin’s space until space didn’t exist, pressing them together until Jongin didn’t have a shirt and neither did Kyungsoo. _

_ Kyungsoo picked him up and they were on the ground, on the little carpet Kyungsoo kept out there, and now Jongin’s skin was lit with moonlight and his chocolate hair was splayed out around him in a dark halo. And Kyungsoo was kissing down his delicate chest and then Jongin was opening his legs wider and Kyungsoo could feel his breath next to his ear as he pushed into— _

Kyungsoo woke up sticky. The light was blinding coming in from the window and he realized he’d forgotten to close his blackout shades last night. Then everything came rushing in at once, and he had an appointment he was late for and filming afterwards, so he threw the comforter off himself in mild disgust and amazement—this hadn’t happened to him in a while.

More people were starting to congratulate him on  _ Flight to Gwangju.  _ He hadn’t gotten a call yet, nor had he heard anything from anyone reputable, so all he could do was scratch the back of his head and smile sheepishly. The police department still hadn’t figured out who’d broken into his apartment, but his building had paid for all the damages and installed a state-of-the-art monitoring system. And he’d changed his locks after Jongin had moved in, thinking of everything but Jongin as he did so. He could tell the officer on the case was praying every night that he would drop it. He was tempted to keep the case open just to annoy that one officer, who slicked back his hair too much, talked too much, and didn’t really know much of anything.

There was a marathon filming session that afternoon and then a dinner that night with just the cast, not the crew, “Because,” Minjoon, his on-screen father said, “We’re an exclusive bunch of shits, and nobody gets us like us.” Then he winked. Minjoon’s winks were great, especially when Kyungsoo was drunk. And of course, it was when Kyungsoo was drunk that the producers of  _ Flight to Gwangju  _ decided to call him.

Dayoung practically squealed when she saw the contact name on his phone, pulling him up with insistent, useless hands and prodding him toward some unused room or nook in the restaurant they’d rented for the occasion. Kyungsoo answered, giving Dayoung a skeptical look. The offered him the position she and everyone else said they would. The producer was nice—Kyungsoo had worked with him before on a drama—and he laid out what they had planned so far. But to Kyungsoo, only the key words got through.  _ Firefights. Explosions. Ammo.  _ The producer was playing it up and trying to make it sound badass. Kyungsoo wished he could stop the man, tell him that wasn’t the way to make him take a project.

Instead, he just said: “Sir? I think I’ll have to get back to you.” The other side of the line crackled. Surprised.

Then: “Oh. Yes, of course. Take your time, get back to us... listen, how about you get back to us within the month? If you really don’t want it, that’ll give us enough time to cast and everything. But you know, this movie really was written with you in mind. I know it’s a lot more action than you usually do but for the drama it’s you through and through. And it’s a huge audience—it’s the next step.”

Kyungsoo had to put his hand over Dayoung’s mouth to keep her squeal from sounding through his phone. “Of course,” he said quickly. “I really appreciate it.” They said their goodbyes, and Kyungsoo hung up first. Then he rose an eyebrow, looking at Dayoung.

She looked back at him with an equally quizzical expression. “What? I told you it was yours. It’s a  _ lock  _ for you. I don’t know why you didn’t tell him yes right there. He—”

“It’s complicated.”

Dayoung’s bottom lip jutted out and Kyungsoo found himself thinking it was cute and her voice was actually rather pleasant. “Well yes I know it’s complicated, but you can’t possibly have something  _ better  _ lined up after this, I mean even if you had a Hollywood movie I wouldn’t—” and then she made a surprised sound that didn’t sound like any words, because Kyungsoo had kissed her squarely on the lips, a juicy kiss that captured her lips and kept them for a while.

They’d kissed before, of course, on screen. But Kyungsoo never kissed on screen the way he kissed off screen. When he finally let her go, Dayoung was finally quiet for a moment, blinking a few times and leaning her shoulder against the wall, a flush coming up in her cheeks. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

Kyungsoo smiled. On screen people didn’t swear when they were surprised. Usually. He shrugged. “I wanted to.”

“If you wanted to fuck with me you could’ve—well but you cut me off and you’re about to throw away your career!” A little line of worry formed between her eyebrows.

Kyungsoo sighed, looking at her and letting his feelings settle in him. Or maybe it was alcohol. “You’re everything a woman should be, you know that?” He asked, winding an arm around her waist and watching her flush get deeper.

“Flattered,” she replied, her voice dropping to an embarrassed rasp. “It  _ is  _ my job, you know. Where is all this coming from? You’re been a reserved drunk, the other times I’ve seen you.”

Kyungsoo shrugged. “Call me lonely.”

“You? Lonely?” This seemed genuinely funny to Dayoung but that wasn’t the reaction Kyungsoo wanted.

“Yes! So what maybe—maybe!” He gripped her waist tighter and she quieted, a flighty worry settling over her. She sighed and extracted his hand from her waist, leaning against the wall next to him so that they were shoulder to shoulder, looking at the dinner party in the next room happily chatting away.

“So maybe you are,” she replied quietly, and Kyungsoo almost didn’t catch her because a waiter passed in front of them and then, smirking, hurried on his way. “So you’re Do Kyungsoo. Find someone to make you un-lonely. Or maybe  _ Flight to Gwangju  _ is what’s missing. It looks like a good crew.”

Kyungsoo shook his head. He didn’t know what there was to object to in what she was saying. Maybe he was waiting for Jongin’s name to spill from her lips. Instead, he said, “You never told me what  _ you  _ were doing after this.”

That got her smirking again. She stood up straight and turned to him, her back to the party so her face was shadowed in a backlight. “I’m going to the states. I know too much English. But until then, because I mean, you know this business—I’m just going to model. I’m brand enough, I’ll get endorsements.”

That made Kyungsoo laugh. “Slacker.” She stuck out her tongue at him in response, then turned, gesturing at him to come back to the party. “Maybe Jongin is what’s missing,” he said to her back, under his breath. Or maybe he just mouthed it. Or maybe he just thought it. But it was funny, and it kept him laughing, and chuckling as he sat down so that people asked him what was so funny and he had a hard time diverting their attention, because nothing really was funny he was just laughing, laughing because he didn’t really laugh enough anymore because Jongin had left on the seventh day.

***

“Tu es tout ce qu'une femme devrait être, tu sais ça?” Jongin asked, propping his head on his elbow and looking down at the little french blonde.  _ You’re everything a woman should be, you know that? _

She smirked up at him and he felt empty, watching her blue eyes dance. “Je sais.”  _ I know. _

_ *** _

Author's note: so... hopefully I answered some questions? And you all probably have some new questions too lol. Comment what you think!


	5. Mon Coeur

_ warnings: psychological trauma/ptsd _

He didn’t meet her at an after party or a show—that was his first mistake. He’d met her in the little grocery store around the corner from the apartment he was renting. She was tittering about the cans of so up stacked in his cart and he’d felt the faint stirrings of righteousness, enough to confront her. She was more open than most french girls, even the ones he met at the after parties. The ones at the after parties cast furtive side glances at him and popped their hips out at the angle that was supposed to mean,  _ meet me outside in five minutes.  _ He missed every other signal. Ana offered to cook him some fish and said she’d seen him in an ad before.

She confused him right away, with the taste of salmon still sweet on his tongue, pressing him into a slow, pleasant kiss and telling him he looked lonely. But when he woke up that morning before the sun, he was in his apartment and there was nowhere to run. Their plates from the night before glinted mockingly from his little wooden table next to the kitchen, uncleared, ushering in the beginning of the second day during which Jongin would break his rules. Except now he was in a foreign country, speaking a foreign language, with a foreign girl. He thought the sun barely looked the same through the ornate Paris buildings.

When Ana finally woke up, she emerged from the bedroom to find Jongin motionless in the middle of his apartment, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth, staring out the window. She wrapped the blanket a little more tightly around her.

“Do you smoke?”

Jongin blinked, goosebumps breaking out across his bare skin. This apartment was colder than he was used to. He took the cigarette from his mouth, looking down at it and then back at Ana. Her hair was bedraggled and looked almost white in this light, like her skin. But her eyes glowed blue more vividly than anything in the room. “No,” he replied, putting it back in its box. “No, not anymore.” He shivered again.

“Come back to bed.”

“Do you want...” Jongin trailed off, swallowing, his adam’s apple casting a shadow against his throat.

“Breakfast?” She finished his sentence for him, raising an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth quirking upwards.

“ _ Oui. _ ”

Ana sighed. “It must be six a.m.,” she said. “I don’t know how long you’ve been out here, but I’m going to get a little more sleep, if that’s alright. I can always eat out later.”

“No, no—take your time.” Jongin started forward, holding the door to the bedroom for her absently. She was still watching him absently but her eyes were cloudy with sleep so she didn’t question him too much. He’d only been in Paris a few weeks, so he still looked like a traveller to a Parisian. Whether he was or not, not even Jongin was sure.

And she stuck around. Jongin made two breakfasts that day: one for himself in the morning, and one for them both, when they woke up together with wide eyes, the sun high in the sky, when the clock said noon. They giggled and the morning seemed like a distant dream. Ana ran away soon after but not after insisting that he allow her to plug her number into his phone. Or telling him exactly where the office was that she worked as a journalist.

For a blissful day, Jongin convinced himself that maybe this French girl just had her own set of rules: that she left her one-night beaus’ houses in the middle of the day and told them everything about herself. That she didn’t intend to return.

He barely recognized her at his pre-show that night, clad in his professionalism as he was. Makeup sat dewey on his face and hairspray stiff in his hair as he with other models took turns around the room for the small group of journalists huddled in the middle. They looked sort of furtive, writing down everything their eyes could sop up—except Ana, who would write a little bit, then look up at Jongin, and let a soft smile light upon her face for a moment before pushing her hair out of her face and going back to her work. The room was small and monochrome and it even though Jongin was looking ahead of him, as models did, he saw her always in the corner of his vision as he circled, amid a swirl of grey and white fabric and glasses and paper. He wondered if a better name for the theme of this show might be The Classroom, for all the apparent studying that was occurring.

Afterward the models came out to mingle—but discreetly; they weren’t really supposed to say anything, or do anything except be vaguely charming and not very vulgar at all, for the benefit of the designer’s image. It was amusing to Jongin, considering his reputation back in Korea. But he didn’t get long in the room, since Ana pulled him out into a stairwell with a small window that looked out on a cobblestone street riddled with couples, eyes shining up at him.

“You’re very good at your job, Jongin.”

“Thank you.”

“I really have to work, though.” She pulled him in for a long, tongue-filled kiss anyway. He smirked into it. The window didn’t really hit her face very much, except her eyes, and it felt like they were seeing straight through to his soul. “You should come by my place later,” She said, after making a big show of pushing away. Her face was a little flushed and she looked proud of resisting his lips long enough to talk. “I’ll text you the address. It’s bigger than yours. Only a little bit, but you know Paris.”

“ _ Oui _ .” He didn’t bother to mention that he didn’t know Paris that well at all. He knew Seoul, and space was hard to find there, too. He assumed that was what she was referring to. If it was some other social subtlety at play, he missed it entirely.

He did not go to the address that popped up on his phone. Instead, he followed one of the French models to a club in Bastille, cramming himself onto someone’s lap as the fourth person in the backseat of a car probably made with two people in mind as the mode amount of occupants. The guy sitting below him was wearing sticky leather pants that clung to him with the humidity of the air.

He was the first to tumble out of the car and the first to knock down a shot, to the surprised delight of the models he’d come back. He watched in their behavior as they made the collective decision to perhaps  _ not  _ ditch him right away. After all, it wasn’t nighttime yet, and they still needed to eat. Theoretically. It was a game: whoever ate first lost. Jongin threw himself into the famished fray of hunger pangs and lightheadedness with fervor. The club had an auxiliary restaurant, and they monopolized a corner, ordering appetizer after appetizer and sending them back nearly untouched.

Low, two-toned music pounded in the background and Jongin found himself closing his eyes every five minutes to dispel the strong déjà vu. Was he in Seoul or Paris? Was it French or Korean this girl whispered in his ear? It didn’t matter: only that he followed the flow of the nasal vowels of this language through the smoke—smoke? Yes, someone had pulled out a blunt and now the manager was coming over to shout at him. A small, portly man with a suit a color too blue to be a suit. Jongin thought, I could pull that off. The thought broke him, and he took a bite from the corner of a piece of bruschetta.

Finally they moved to the club, and everyone took a shot together, and Jongin felt a cheshire grin spreading on his face as he slammed back another, and then another. Three spreading warm in his belly, he took a pill from the tall model whose lap he’d sat on, and yelled in his face, “Fuck the déjà vu!” and the model just smiled complacently at him and steered him toward the dance floor. It tilted and Jongin giggled, but then he remembered where he was and licked his lips, tilting his head lazily in the way he knew changed him from man into sex.

His vision latched onto a tiny girl in a short shimmery dress. It was pink and it shone brighter than the sun. It pierced everything around it and Jongin wondered if he could touch it. He touched her ass and it felt rough, like plastic, like little flat pills layered over each other that shone and stabbed at his eyes. He heard  her mutter “ _ Beau _ ,” under her breath as she moved closer to him, and through the heaviness of his tongue he thought he got through,  **_“_ ** _ Putain, j'suis déchiré...”  _ trying to communicate to someone that he wasn’t in control of himself any longer.

Pink Sequin Girl didn’t seem to think that was a bad thing; she just drew him closer and stuck her fingers into his hair so that they scraped against his scalp until his hair felt like it might fall out. He swallowed around a dry throat and dropped his head too her shoulder.

***

Kyungsoo looked back up at Dayoung with wide eyes, his pen shaking in his hand as it hovered over the contract. He licked his lips but it didn’t help; they became sticky and his vision blurred and he couldn’t see her voice clearly for a moment. She nodded at him encouragingly, her mouth opened slightly in anticipation, her fingers drumming nervously on the desk in front of her.

Kyungsoo’s mind was a mess. He still hadn’t told her why he didn’t want to do  _ Flight to Gwangju _ , but the longer he’d spent with her, the more she’d wheedled him about it, until he’d finally caved, part of him becoming her a nd believing that his career was dead if he didn’t take this film. So he’d said yes and bought himself some time; but what was time, when he didn’t do anything with it? Somewhere in a corner of his apartment was the list of things he’d wanted to achieve at the beginning of his career, and on it was a psychological thriller. Well, here he was. And there was the script, sitting tantalizingly on the conference table in front of him, open to him at the sweep of a signature.

He signed quickly, dropping the pen immediately and pushing the pen toward the producer, a wiry man in his late fifties with a kind face and rimless glasses. “Welcome to the team, Kyungsoo. We’re so lucky to have you. Tuck in, it’s gonna be a long ride.” Gunho slid the contract away from Kyungsoo and replaced it with the fat script. Kyungsoo stared at the korean printed neatly on front.  _ Flight to Gwangju. _

“Go ahead.” He heard Dayoung’s soft voice from the auxiliary. She’d come as moral support; she didn’t want a part in the movie and had, ironically turned down a supporting role in the movie. “Open it.”

He opened the first page and started reading.

By the end he wondered if he leapt across the table and seized the contract from Gunho right now if the producer would be able to fight him off, or indeed, if he would. “Do you like it?” There were at least five other people in the large conference room with them. They were on a high floor of an office building and Kyungsoo wasn’t used to it—he had played an office worker on his very first acting gig, but that was at two or three years ago now and fading fast in memory. Windows lined the wall behind him, so even if he’d wanted to miss an expression from his discussants, he couldn’t have.

_ Do you like it?  _ “It’s... violent.”

“Only in the end. It’s actually a very slow build. Very Silence of the Lambs in that way. But of course, we’ve got a target audience. The scenes are written for that.” Gunho folded his hands. “I really think there’s a lot for you to work with on both aspects.”

“Both aspects... psychological and physical?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“I have to go.” Kyungsoo stood up abruptly, his fingers resting on the script as he looked around at his company. “I’m so sorry, I just—I just remembered that I double booked. I’ll call you, Gunho.”

“Well at least tell me if you liked it, Kyungsoo. The suspense is killing the writers.”

The writers looked like the suspense was killing them. Kyungsoo moved to the door of the conference room. “It’s a good script,” he said quietly, his voice catching in his throat. “It’s a very good script.” And then he fled, no, not to the elevator, that was too much standing, not enough moving—to the stairs then, around and around, to the street where he hailed a cab and then home to his empty, always empty apartment.

Screamed into his pillow.

Took a nap and when he woke up a knock came at the door and he stumbled to open it. Had to adjust his line of sight downward—he wasn’t used to that. Dayoung was a little shorter than he was. “Dayoung?”

“You should really get a dog, or something.” Dayoung crossed her arms, peering around Kyungsoo at his neat apartment, “Your place is so... clean.”

Kyungsoo raised an eyebrow, stepping backward into his apartment and letting her in. “What can I do you for?” He asked, moving to start some tea. When he looked back, he caught Dayoung studying him intently, her eyebrows drawn together. “What?”

“Why’d you kiss me, weeks ago at that party?” She sat against the back of the couch.

“Wha—I—that was certainly a while ago, what’s bring this up?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know. I was drunk, I guess.”

“Bullshit. You’re the gayest gay I know.”

Kyungsoo stared at her, openmouthed. “Okay seriously, why’d you come by? I thought you were just going to yell at me for the meeting today a little bit, but if you’re going to call me the  _ gayest gay  _ you know—which for the record, you know  _ Robin _ , which makes—”

“Okay, okay, you’re not the gayest gay I know, but the point is, that was around when you first started acting weird. Or maybe a little after that, actually. But still. I don’t know, it was gradual.”

“I... I’m not sure you know me well enough to say that, Dayoung. Joongki hasn’t said anything.”

She looked hurt, blinking a few times and fidgeting uncomfortably in her seat. “You don’t hang out with Joongki as much as you used to,” she replied quietly, like she was trying to avoid waking a sleeping bear.

She had no reason to be concerned. Kyungsoo deflated. “I see. An intervention.”

“No, not a—”

“I don’t want a fucking intervention, Dayoung. I was fine hanging out, and doing acting stuff but I’m not about to...” he trailed off.  _ I wish you wouldn’t cry, hyung. Your laugh is so much prettier. _

“Kyungsoo?” Kyungsoo snapped back into the real world, and Dayoung was there next to him, standing by the counter in the kitchen, and they were shrouded in shadows because he never turned the kitchen light on and the natural light from the windows didn’t reach in there as much. “Kyungsoo, you can tell me what’s wrong. Why are you so scared to do this movie? I know you won’t admit it, but I know you are. I’m telling you that whatever it is, I’m not going to judge you for it. I’m not going to—”

“I’m not about to cry on your goddamn shoulder.” Kyungsoo cut her off, looking down and to the side, his hands gripping the counter so tightly his knuckles ground against each other. “I appreciate your friendship, but you don’t get that privilege. I’m fine and I’ll  _ be  _ fine. I signed the contract. I’ll be at work tomorrow.”

Dayoung was quiet a few moments, her body sinking through space away from him. “Sometimes I think you can’t decide whether to be nice to me or mean.”

“I never _ try _ to be mean. It’s unbecoming of anyone.”

“Unbecoming,” she repeated. “Kyungsoo, you’ve never been one for appearances.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You’re right, I’m just one for principles. You should go.”

“But you’re—”

“The gayest gay you know?” Kyungsoo raised an eyebrow.

“I take it back. I take it back!” Dayoung giggled. So at least Kyungsoo was smiling when he shut the door behind her. Then he turned his back on it and dialed Bogum’s number.

“Hey.

\--Hey, is tonight good for drinks?

\--Yeah, that’s fine.

\--Yeah. I don’t know, two, three hours? I gotta eat still.

\--Okay. See you then.”

He hung up and sat down on his floor, sighing and letting his hand fall to the ground, flinching when the pads of his fingers touched the rough wood. The lacquer that protected the wood was slightly scratched, the way halfway-filed dog nails scratched floors.

***

Jongin woke in an unfamiliar bed to an unfamiliar panic in his stomach. It propelled him from his bed and into the bedroom next to it, to the toilet, where he puked a thin stream of clear stomach juice that looked like the saliva silkworms use to create their traps for unsuspecting insects. It sent his head flying, and he sat down heavily on the floor, wiping his mouth with the back of his shirt. His shirt: he was wearing the same one he’d been wearing—well, the same one he’d been wearing the last time he could remember wearing a shirt. But now the earth shook and he licked his lips, since he couldn’t clench his jaw like he normally would; that would probably hurt his headache too much.

“Jongin, thank god! I was worried you were never going to wake up.” It was Ana, of course it was, standing above him and looking tall for the first time, her blond hair swinging above him and soaking up all the light in the room so that Jongin had to squint his eyes to look at her. She was dressed in a tank top and shorts and had big glasses perched on her nose, and after her first exclamation she hesitated, and he felt studied. But perhaps she’d just been checking herself, because when she moved again it was more slowly, cautiously—she bent down toward him and touched his shoulder, pulling back gently when he flinched inadvertently.

“Here, come have some coffee and some ibuprofen. I’ll make some eggs. Or if you want to go back to bed I’ll just bring you some drugs and you can go back to sleep.” She was making her voice as soft as it could go, lilting and  _ shushey.  _ She was wobbling slightly from her crouch, but Jongin understood: she didn’t want to sit down with him because the white tile on the floor was cold and she cared and he didn’t. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back to rest against the wall. Behind his eyelids he saw himself throwing up on her and it made a giggle bubble up in his chest. “Jongin?” When he opened his eyes she was still waiting for him to do something, eyes wide. For a split second he hated her, hated her and her journalists who studied him and created only on paper, whose job it was to gossip and tell stories of other people’s creations. Who didn’t create anything of their own.

“Oh, I don’t want it,” he mumbled, flicking her hand away. She stayed there, hovering, the sun coming through the little window over the toilet and refracting through her glasses. “ _ Je ne...”  _ he didn’t even feel like repeating himself. He just sat there, sullenly, until she sighed quietly and stood up.  She came back, though, with water and two large pills, and let her give them to him. Then he went back to sleep, fleeing his headache, and he dreamed of a black puppy at the top of a skyscraper and it jumped and he watched it fall for stories and stories until it landed, and then he was at the top again, its paw just over the side, about to jump.

When he woke up again his stomach hurt but his head felt almost fine, and he no longer felt the unfamiliar panic of unfamiliarity. It seemed silly, retrospectively, that he’d been nervous in a foreign bed. He  _ lived  _ in foreign beds. When Ana saw him she approached him cautiously, but he opened his arms to her, and she let out a breath she’d been holding, relaxing into him and kissing a sweet trail down his neck. “I was so worried,” she murmured.

“I know.”

“I gave you my address, Jongin. Why didn’t you come? Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter now; you’re here, anyway. Did you know I only found you because someone bothered to call your emergency contact?”

Jongin sighed, rubbing her arm absently. It was cold. His phone must have shown her as the last person contacted. “Just don’t try to save me again, Ana. Please.”  _ It’s not your place. It’s not supposed to be you. _

Ana was quiet after that, confused but apparently happy to lay against him until his stomach made a sound loud enough to hear. “Do you need to eat?” She perked up. “Of course you need to eat. Gosh, when’s the last time— _ merde. _ ”

She was up and out the door and making food. He ate as much of it as he could; he’d done this before. It was a careful dance of small portions and long periods of chewing. If you ate too much it came back up. But soon he was full, and consequently cheerier. He jumped to reconciliation automatically, like he was living in a house from ten years ago. “Ana, let’s watch a movie. You don’t have work today, do you? It’s Sunday—you don’t work on Sunday, right?”

Ana was delighted. She bought popcorn from the store and they sat on her loveseat in front of her television, which hung from the wall between an abstract painting made by some American and a photograph from some fashion show, a man in a red robe that swirled around him and would probably have made Joseph jealous. Ana insisted on a Korean movie. Jongin acquiesced entirely; he was feeling passive about everything in general. His toes were cold, but he let them rest atop the rough carpet, feeling the abrasive thistles like a thousand toothbrushes lined up for him.

Until Kyungsoo’s face loomed suddenly on the screen—big, zoomed in. His hair was shorter than the way Jongin remembered it but he looked much the same, his eyes shining in the weak Prague sunlight. “Are you alright?” Ana murmured. He must have stiffened up, because she’d lifted her head from his shoulder and was looking at him.

“I thought you said this was a Korean movie,” he muttered.

“Well, it’s got some Korean supporting actors. It’s about immigrants—a drama.”

“Oh.”

He was subjected to numerous close-ups of Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo falling in love with a delicate, starving Korean girl who didn’t have a chance of making it in the world; Kyungsoo’s family moving and Kyungsoo refusing; Kyungsoo fleetingly happy. “ _ Mon coeur, _ ” Kyungsoo said softly, velvet lips parting in pliant whispers, and rested his head on the pillow next to her. Jongin fidgeted. “ _ Si le destin existe, vous serez parti en un clin d'œil. _ ”  _ If fate exists, you’ll be gone in the blink of an eye. _

Fate existed.

_ “Mon coeur. _ ” Through the television, Kyungsoo’s face trembled as he stood at the top of the steps to the train station and Jongin pressed his eyes closed.

***

“Kyungsoo, I have a shoot in two hours. I should probably already be there schmoozing people, making them love me so they have me back. If I’m late it doesn’t matter that I’m pretty, they’ll find someone who sucks their dicks better.” Doyoung pouted.

“I’m sure you’ll suck their dicks just fine,” Kyungsoo replied, grinding his teeth and leading her out of his new trailer. It was a brisk day and strangely, his fingers weren’t cold today—it was his toes, clothed in the thin socks his stylist had given him and thin loafers. A young businessman, that’s what he was: a dick until cornered into a pressuring situation, and then, somehow, he found heroism. He’d make it fun by not forgetting about the dickishness from the beginning.

“I don’t see why you need me here, anyway.” Doyoung was still complaining as Kyungsoo lead her to the set: an airport terminal, of all places, where they were beginning with a bang.

“Because when this all goes to shit, I’m going to blame you and leave you here to clean up my mess,” Kyungsoo replied bluntly. “And I chose you because it’s your fault, not because I value your help more than anyone else.”

“You’re so goddamn mean to me lately. I get that you’re angsty but you really don’t have to take it out on me.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah. Whatever. Hey, did you hear about Jongin?” She was just making conversation, but it made Kyungsoo seize up a little. He smoothed his features.

“No. What about him? I haven’t heard anything.”

“Apparently he’s in Paris—you know, fashion week was last week, so there’s, I guess, plenty of work, but the thing is, he made the papers here. For fashion but also, I mean this is just gossip, but apparently he was at this crazy rager in Bastille and almost died—died! I don’t believe it, though, he seemed like he knew what the fuck he was doing.”

“Nah.” Kyungsoo gave a shuddering sigh, resting his hands in his pockets. “That sounds like Jongin. A Jongin out of control, but still Jongin. Anyway.”

They’d made it to the group of producers, cameramen, and actors at the scene. Gunho separated himself from the group, followed by the director, Youngjin, a well-dressed young man carrying what made Kyungsoo’s mouth go dry. “It’s honestly very realistic,” Youngjin explained. His voice was deep and booming—Kyungsoo had forgotten, since the last time he’d seen the director he’d had a total of two lines. “You point and you pull the trigger and some things move and there’s a pretty cool lightshow. There’s a kickback, too, but it’s not as bad as the real thing. But it’s got a bang—it’s a gun. We’re going to do some close-ups later, but we’re going to start out with the choreography, so you don’t have to shoot for that.”

“What, not even any lines?” Kyungsoo cracked half a nervous smile, eyes flicking from Youngjin to the metal and back to the director. They’d had introductions yesterday and gone over their schedule—in fact they’d been rehearsing in meetings for a while, while sets were being built. Kyungsoo was stalling.

“Not  _ even  _ any lines.” Gunho smirked, like this was a selling point of Kyungsoo’s first day of work. Kyungsoo looked at Dayoung, who raised an eyebrow. And then Youngjin was holding the gun out to him, stretching across space, grey before all the grey of the airport.

“Come on, you have to take it, dude.” Youngjin looked confused. Kyungsoo took a breath and took the gun from him. It was smooth and cold and heavy like he remembered. It was smaller in his hand, though. He shivered. His toes were cold. He dropped the hand with the gun to his side, so that if that hand started shaking, they wouldn’t see. He tried not to think about the HD and 3D and 4D cameras sitting in wait behind him, lions stalking their prey.

They rehearsed and Kyungsoo let Youngjin’s voice propel him through his steps until they were automatic. His co-stars were nice and he vaguely knew most of them, but he figured he’d get to know them well enough in the coming months.

“Okay, Kyungsoo, go ahead and shoot when you come around the corner this time. Still rehearsal, but we’ll use a camera for lighting and everything.”

***

“Mon coeur? Mon—” Jongin flinched, coming out of his reverie to look up at Ana. She was frowning at him from across her small breakfast table, small arms folded in front of her like stiff noodles. “Tell me, why do you always flinch when I call you that?”

“What? I don’t flinch.”

“It looks like you flinch.”

"I don't think so."

“Well.” She stood and collected his small plate, brushing his nose affectionately. “I’m just trying to bring you out of your head. You live up there, you know? The real world can be diverting too, I’ve heard.”

“Only you, Ana,” Jongin replied, resting his chin on his hands. “Only you in those beautiful, tight-ass shorts. You’re killing me.” She turned around and he was grinning, sitting back in his chair and looking smug.

“What are you up to?” Her eyes were narrow now but she couldn’t contain her smile—he’d known her for less than a month and already he knew that about her. “It must be six thirty in the morning.”

“You know me in the morning. I  _ love  _ the morning.” Jongin was lying through his teeth. He’d taught himself to tolerate the morning. But the world seemed to reward those who woke up early, so it was another way for him to make life at once harder and easier for himself. Like smoking.

She was sitting in his lap now, flush with his crotch. She smelled good, like a fresh shower, and he kissed to consume, kissed to erase himself from her little Parisian apartment: to become her. She ground against him in his lap lazily—unusual for her, and it made him proud, because it meant that she finally felt that they could take their time. He liked taking his time, when the humor took him. He brought her even closer to him with hands on her ass and through her hair.

“ _ C'est quoi ce bordel?!” What the fuck?! _

Jongin popped off her lips with a smack, head whipping to look for the source of the profanity. He was definitely french: tall, and slender, with black hair and grey eyes that looked ready to murder him. “ _ Merde. _ ” She swore, flying off him and towards the man, who wore a light motorcycle jacket and scarf and carried a suitcase in his tightly clenched hand. “ _ Mon chou, mon chou, mon chou,”  _ she was saying to him, and Jongin was wiping his mouth slowly, sitting back in his chair, watching the man look from the woman speaking in hurried, hushed tones to him to the man sitting in his girlfriend’s apartment.

Jongin could only assume. He’d suspected; Ana verified often that he was a traveller and didn’t stay in the same place often. And she seemed to enjoy the concept of their fleetingness. But now she flitted about this strange man nervously as he took tentative steps into the apartment, morphing from a startled gazelle into a bull. Jongin watched as fire kindled in his eyes and he sighed, standing gracefully and opening his hands as a signal of complacency.

The man didn’t take it. Jongin clenched his jaw, sparing Ana another look. His mind kept going back to his rules. But the man was advancing on him and the apartment was small and he picked up his fists as the man took his first swing, forgetting to first drop his suitcase.

It blocked easily. Jongin felt bad enough that he let the man take a few more swings, and even let one connect to his ribs, where most clothes covered, before clubbing him soundly in the cheekbone and then once to the windcage, sending him stumbling back and shaking his head like Jongin was a meal of disagreeable vegetables to a baby.

Jongin took only his phone and his wallet; the rest was either at the apartment he’d rented or he didn’t care. He was out the door and pursued by the man all the way into the street, where the morning rush to work was just beginning. Ana’s shouts echoed louder and louder behind them and she almost knocked Jongin’s new adversary off the sidewalk into the street with her momentum. But Jongin was already making the daring dash through the sea of vehicles, an airbender, a puff on the wind current (with the help of some honking and dissatisfied drivers).

When he got to the other side he chanced a look back to see the man take a deep breath and plunge in after him less nimble and more angry, but getting closer nonetheless. So he turned towards an alley between two apartment buildings, ducking under a low-hanging fire escape. But he didn’t miss the heavy thump and squeal of brakes, or the loud honking and the subsequent breaking, or Ana’s long shout. But he was already off, squeezing through the alley, not daring to look back. He slipped into a taxi and then—

His phone rang.

***

It exploded in his hand, the stuff of myth and legend, the force a thousand horses couldn't hope for, and Kyungsoo trembled before it. He couldn’t close his eyes to it now. It was there in front of him, in slow motion as the kickback of the gun shot through him. There they were in front of him, looking up at him with love wobbling in the corners of their eyes, hair static flying about them like small halos. The bullet pounded forward, rushing like a thousand rivers until it became an echoing that faded to a voice.

“Soo! Kyungsoo!  _ Kyungsoo! _ ” He blinked, and the halos got brighter around them until they enveloped the whole world, and then they were gone, and it was just Dayoung, her open face right in front of him, small hands on his shoulders, shaking him a little, worry bleeding into distress in her expression.

He looked at her, and dropped the gun. Licked his lips. “I—” He found himself mute and his legs wobbly, so he rested his arms on her shoulders, dropping his face into her neck and resting his weight on her a moment. He let himself shake. They were gone for the moment but in his memory it felt like it just happened, now. He felt like he needed another three months to recover. And he had a meeting today, too.

“Everything okay over there? You froze up.” Youngjin’s voice boomed from his spot.

“ _ No! _ ” Dayoung practically screeched back at him, and the urgency in her voice must have shut him up, because they weren’t interrupted again. Slowly, she brought her hand to his hair and used it as leverage to pick it up so she could look him in the eyes. “Kyungsoo? Kyungsoo, look at me.”

He blinked, looking down and then slowly inching his eyes up to hers.

“Do you want to go home? Just take a break? What happened?” Her hand was massaging the back of his head where it had been holding his hair and it felt like she was teasing tears from his chest, from a place he didn’t want to unlock.

“I—I think,” he said, his voice gruff and broken, and so low he wasn’t sure if she could even hear him, “I need to make a phone call.”

To her credit, Dayoung didn’t yell at him, and she kept her surprise at a minimum. She muttered something to the producer hovering a safe distance away and they nodded, scampering back to Youngjin, who called a ten minute break, and then lead him back to Kyungsoo’s trailer: a warm, close space full of yellowey light and fabric salvaged from other sets. Once he was situated cross-legged on his bed, leaning against the wall, she stood above him, crossing her arms.

“Okay, do you need anything else? Do you want me to leave?”

He nodded.

She sighed but complied, closing the door of his trailer with a click. Kyungsoo sat and listened to himself breathe. He could hear the muffled hustle and bustle of the set outside, but inside he was the only thing making sound. He pulled out his phone and pressed number 8. Listened to the phone ring in his hand without putting it to his ear; listened to it echo in the trailer. Finally brought it to his ear like he’d been tugged to it.

When it picked up he jumped. He’d almost gone into a trance, relaxing into the ringing of the phone. But no one answered. The other end crackled, and if Kyungsoo listened closely enough, he could hear the sounds of traffic.

“Jongin?” Kyunsgoo’s voice was tentative, wavering—barely there. But there was no response. He thought he caught a breath from the other side of the line, and he remembered how they’d parted. The break-in at their apartment. A  _ whore,  _ Jongin had called himself. He listened a little longer, and now he was sure there was breathing on the other end of the line. “Jongin I know that’s you.” No response. “Jongin, you don’t have to reply to me. I know you blame yourself for—for  _ something _ .” There was a honk from the other side of the phone, and some rustling.

“Jongin, they made me shoot a gun. I took  _ Flight to Gwangju  _ because I thought it would be the right thing for my career. I thought you would have wanted me to do it. I thought... I thought maybe you might come back, and you might like to see the set or something.” He licked his lips, words crowding onto his lips faster than he could let them spill out. “But I can’t  _ do  _ that—Jongin, I can’t shoot guns, I can barely look at them anymore! It’s... I don’t know what it’s officially called, but when I sleep I dream about it and that’s why you heard me cry. Because I was crying that day. But when I shoot—” his words got stuck in his throat and he coughed.

“But when I shoot a gun... Jonginnie, I know you’re there.” He was practically whining now, but there was still silence on the other end of the line. “When I shoot a gun I live it again. It just happened to me. And all I can think about now is how I wish you’d come back and tell me what an idiot I’m being. That’s all. You could even tell me that right now, probably.”

The breathing was still there, but no response, and now frustrated tears started shoving themselves through his eyes, and Kyungsoo clenched his jaw, clutching his phone. “Fine. You know where I live if you ever decide to stop killing yourself.” And he hung up, his chest heaving and shuddering, scared to sleep, scared to close his eyes, scared to step outside. He lay down on his back and stared at the metallic ceiling, at a spot of rust right above him. It looked vaguely like a dog, he thought. No—a puppy. At least he had a puppy, then. Even if it was made of rust.

***

Jongin stared at the screen of his phone until it died. He licked his lips and tasted salt and exhaust. The French driver looked back at him, concerned, but didn’t say anything. Jongin thought that a driver in Seoul might have asked him if everything was alright. But the driver just told him how much the journey was once he got to his rented apartment and drove away in a puff of exhaust. It was still sunny outside—still a whole day ahead of him, and after that, indeed: Jongin had no plan. He buzzed into his building and let his steps fall heavy up the narrow steps to his apartment, staring at it dejectedly from the doorway. It welcomed him the way a whale’s mouth welcomes plankton from the ocean: large and grey and full of deadness.

He allowed himself a shower at the very least and the hot water only energized him more. He wasn’t working at all today. His next work was a go-see tomorrow afternoon. His job from now until then was to kill time and not die. So he threw on some ripped jeans and a tan sweater and was out the door again, reluctant to drive again, reluctant to look at his phone to see where he was. Reluctant to think too much about the last hour.

Kyungsoo haunted him anyway. Not Ana, not her beau—Kyungsoo.  _ When I shoot a gun I live it again. _ Jongin had never considered himself a good person, but he’d never really needed to. He’d never been called to action, to help someone who truly needed it. It was always people insisting he needed help and he shoving them petulantly away. Kyungsoo’s ability to reverse the concepts left him dizzy.

As he walked, morning rush slowly dissipated and gave way to the tourists—after all, it was getting warm, and Paris hid its dirt in gushing streams of water in the sewers and colorful signs in its windows. He began to play a game with himself. Think of someone he’d fucked over and decide whether they’d stalk him to where he was staying with a friend and break into that friend’s house. Who would go that far?

He went through more people than he enjoyed, but he found his mind circling farther and farther back, to before his promiscuity, to before he’d given in to his mother and become a model. To giddy cold nights of foggy breath and car alarms and pounding feet. To shouting into fields that stretched out forever. To cars without license plates. But they’d all been friends, and he hadn’t spoken to them since. Surely they didn’t hold any grudges. Of everyone, surely not  _ them. _

If he could only figure out who, maybe he could go back to Kyungsoo.

Or maybe it was right that he go back to Kyungsoo anyway. Regardless of the danger he posed, or his tendency toward self-destruction.

Jongin stopped in a museum and stared at the paintings and stopped for longer at the ones that made him feel more. He ate soup for lunch because he didn’t really feel like chewing and then disappeared into the tourists, moving from one group to the next, losing himself and becoming this American couple, and that Taiwanese boy, and this British girl, bouncing on her tiptoes to see the eiffel tower first.

And he turned and wandered down to the river, and walked some more. And the day hurried towards night and his sweater suddenly felt like thin protection among the orange streetlights and perpetual twilight of the sky. He bought a gyro and closed his eyes as he walked, testing himself, trying to see how long he could walk before he opened his eyes. How straight he’d walked on the sidewalk with his eyes closed. Kept walking but now his mind was almost blank, and he only watched as his old loafers skipped every crack. It was too early still for cicadas, but crickets were straining to be heard over the background buzz of the city.

He stopped. Around him sat squatter buildings, less ostentatious than the downtown he’d come from, and across the street sat a church—catholic, by appearance—and warm light glowed from within. He heard a pattering behind him and a little boy flew past him, racing up the steps and heaving the door open. Through the crack the skinny thing used to enter, Jongin saw full pews: a midnight mass. He crossed the street.

No one paid him much mind as he slid in and stood at the back, hunching his shoulders as the warmth of the church seeped into him. The pastor was far away from him, reading in a booming, lulling voice that sounded like the surest thing in the world. “... Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” Jongin looked around: everyone at the mass looked tired, or hungry, but they watched him like they loved him, and so Jongin inspected him more closely. There was nothing extraordinary about him: he was short, and balding, and delivered his sermon in a high, round sounding french that otherwise might have made Jongin bristle. No; there were certainly voices Jongin preferred.

He found himself a seat on a bench along the wall and let the priest’s voice lull him into a kind of sleep. The french bled into one sound, since it wasn’t his native tongue: and then it separated again, in his dream.

“ _ Mon coeur. Nini. Jonginnie,”  _ Kyungsoo whimpered to him, and his eyes were large and helpless, and he stepped off the building and Jongin couldn’t catch him. And snatches of the sermon filtered into his dream. “... and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth...” and now Jongin was receding farther and farther from the building, from Kyungsoo: “...Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.” Jongin saw himself out-of-body, and a great black mark bloomed on his forehead, spreading across his face, spreading—

Jongin jerked awake, and everyone was filing out, sparing not a glance for their neighbor. The people here had love for only the priest, and the words he spoke. Jongin relaxed. At least they didn’t study him. He felt an exhaustion deeper than needing to sleep, or eat, or take some time on the IV, as he had in the past. He was tired of travel—and he was worried that meant he had a home in mind. A place to settle.

_ My home, my rules. _ His mom’s voice echoed in his mind but he shook it off. Empty, the church looked grand, the stained glass casting kaleidoscope patterns on the rough pews and shining cross at the center.

“Tout va bien pour toi?”  _ Are you alright?  _ Jongin blinked up at the priest, standing above him with ruddy cheeks and hands clasped in front of him, head tilted a little to the side.

“Yes,” Jongin answered, sitting up straight and straightening his sweater. And he meant it. “Yes, I am. Just trying to find my innocence.”

“And have you found it?”

“Close enough,” Jongin replied. He thanked the man and slipped back into the night, and for once the breeze welcomed him.

An hour later he was at the train station, and he bought a ticket to:

***

author's note: wow, long update! lots of jongin, but don't worry, there will be lots of kyungsoo coming up! I worked hard on this one because I was so motivated by the positive feedback you guys are giving me :) sorry about all the French lol, but Jongin's getting on a train... where?? hehe~ again, I'm sure I gave you all more questions than I answered. Don't forget to upvote and comment!


	6. Laughing

_warnings: sex. graphic sex. and... graphic violence_  talked  _about. psychological fuckery._

The airport. He couldn’t very well have taken the train across Asia home, or else he would have. He spent the whole journey unsure, and as a result found himself either more sleepy or more jumpy than usual. Either the ideal seat-partner (sleeping, not on your shoulder) or one of the more undesirable (grumpy). Still, soon his plane was setting down its wheels in Busan and he recognized the skyline and it made his stomach flip, like it clung to the wispy clouds and the peaceful background noise of invisible angels rushing by high above.

He took a taxi straight to Kyungsoo’s apartment, each red light offering a shot of adrenaline to his tired system. He’d sustained himself throughout the trip almost exclusively on protein shakes and granola bars, and he felt heavy-headed. It was midday and the sun glittered an emphatic welcome to him as he entered the city proper, and then began to recognize the wide streets of Kyungsoo’s neighborhood.

The concierge at the desk in the lobby looked surprised to see him—it sent a warm stream of pride down his spine. _Not forgotten yet. Not gone yet._ Up the elevator and they still played the same radio station so low he had to still his breathing to recognize the pop song playing. Out onto Kyungsoo’s floor and over to his door.

_Whore._

Written in half-hearted, inconsistent black spray paint, it defiled the smooth oak door in a way that felt so wrong Jongin worried he’d lose his balance. It was scrawled from the wall on one side of the door, across the door, to the other side, and there was some half-hearted police tape over it, like the apartment building guiltily wanted to appear as if they’d seen it at least. It didn’t seem fresh, though—Jongin couldn’t smell a trace of spray paint in the air and it didn’t glisten like fresh paint did. It looked crusted, like a growth, like it had emerged from the apartment itself, accusing him.

He’d lost the confident wave of purpose he’d been riding the whole way here, that he’d caught in the church. It had slipped away, slippery and shiny in the sparkly sun mocking him from the window down the hall, and it receded into the distance. And he didn’t want to see Kyungsoo or anyone he knew. The letters got larger and smaller and lost their shape entirely, breaking down and slinking towards him as his back hit the wall behind him. _Whore._

Jongin returned to the safety of the elevator and listened to happy girl groups and cowered before their carefree voices. Back to the street, to the loud and the stabbing sun, to the cab, to the street, to the red lights, to Busan. Busan was not Seoul, at least. This was his destination, not Seoul, not Kyungsoo.

Busan had its own host of big names: people who had also fled Seoul, or who felt themselves above it, or who filmed there. There were plenty of parties, and it took him three text messages to find a party at a hotel he’d been to before. He knew one of the models, Victoria, and that was enough. He looked down at his clothing: it felt damp with the hours he’d worn it and heavy with wrinkles, so he stopped inside a sleek shop full of sleek black cuts he’d seen last season with looser, more rushed stitching wrap around his body and trip onto the runway. He bought himself a simple white collared shirt and slim cut black pants. He tried to walk from the shop to the hotel—it was only a few blocks—but Busan was smoggy and crowded, crowded unlike Paris, crowded in a way that noticed him for his beauty and probably his tanness, and didn’t let him step a thought in edgewise.

The party was smaller than he’d expected; he stumbled in the doorway of the salon of the hotel, slipping into Victoria’s slim arms for a warm embrace. Her smile was wide as she explained to him, “It’s restricted is all. I didn’t want to invite just anybody. But you’re not anybody, Jongin! We’ve done—Jongin, how many shoots have we done together now?”

“I hope we can define our relationship beyond how much we’ve worked together by now,” Jongin drawled in response, letting his hand linger comfortably at the small of her back as she led him into a small, tasteful lounge with a few dark purple couches, some red drapes, and some very large pieces of confounding modern art.

She hummed back to him, wandering over to the minibar. Jongin knew he was expected to deflate; for the thrumming tension of larger parties to evaporate and in its place a kind of lethargic easygoingness was supposed to evolve. Instead, he felt himself tightening up, muscles locking up and straightening out like he was rusting at super-speed. There were perhaps eight people in the room, and Jongin recognized three: Victoria had invited him, and Baekhyun was an older actor Jongin respected immensely from the one job they’d had together.

The third was Kyungsoo, lounging on a couch on the side of the room with a crystal glass hanging from his hand, rich caramel liquor sitting quietly in the bottom. In his grey hoodie and black skinny jeans, he was clearly trying to be inconspicuous, making sure not to make eye contact with Jongin—and Jongin, surely, was staring intently.

Next to Kyungsoo sat a girl who looked acutely familiar to Jongin, her face young, hair dark. But he’d never met her. He jumped when his arm was nudged, looking down to find Victoria offering him a glass of whatever it was that lay in Kyungsoo’s glass. Jongin distantly heard himself murmuring a thanks and brought the chill crystal to his lips, his brain popping and sizzling at the burn of the alcohol going down. Then he took a deep breath and accepted his loss: his destination had been Busan but Kyungsoo was here anyway. Well, he was here and he wasn’t going anywhere. He took another sip.

He introduced himself to the other people, first, happy when they were all nice people he’d never fucked over and to boot, didn’t know anybody who he’d fucked over. They were mildly riotous and liked to drink and they had stories Jongin could match absurdity for absurdity.

But he could not avoid Kyungsoo. In fact, Jongin knew he’d feel guilty if he didn’t speak to Kyungsoo right away. _Man the fuck up._ He slid onto the sofa next to the actor quietly, like he was trying not to upset the stuffing in the cushion, and pushed some hair out of his face. “Busan, then. You’re filming here?”

“Hi.” Kyungsoo’s voice was just as smoky as he remembered, except it affected him more than he’d anticipated, than he’d intended, and he had to clench his jaw after the first syllable that drifted from Kyungsoo’s drunken lips. Kyungsoo _was_ drunk: his eyes were close to half-lidded and he was flushed. In the back of his mind, Jongin filed the image away as _cute._ “Fancy seeing you here at this shin...dig.” He smirked at the word.

Jongin chuckled. “Fancy seeing _you_ here,” he replied quietly, wondering if Kyungsoo had been home yet—if he’d seen what was written across his door. Maybe that was why it wasn’t cleaned yet.

“I’m filming Flight to Gwangju,” Kyungsoo informed him, shoving hair from his face with his free hand. “I told you that already, though. I told you that on the phone. But you didn’t answer me. Why didn’t you answer me?” He pouted.

“You weren’t really talking to me,” Jongin replied, resting his chin in his hand and watching Kyungsoo sit up a little more. There was a sparkle in Kyungsoo’s eyes that made him nervous. If the actor wanted to, he could act as drunk as he wanted to, if it meant he could avoid really talking to Jongin.

“Of course I was.”

“Me, but not me. An apparition, a shade, a spirit. You know. I had to go find my innocence so I’d be worthy of what you said all that time ago. It’s too late now, though. But then you called me.”

“What, when I offered for you to stay with me?”

“I guess that’s what I’m talking about.”

“Mmm.” Kyungsoo rumbled like this all meant something and he took a long sip of his drink. Jongin watched with his mouth hanging slightly open as the actor’s adam’s apple bobbed and his upper lip curled at the fumes. “In any case, then I called you.”

“Are you...” Jongin coughed awkwardly, shifting the way he was seated, mentally yelling at his dick to shut up. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” Kyungsoo repeated. He turned to fully face Jongin, the soft light of the room playing off the gentle planes of his face and his strong eyebrows, inoffensively sitting above soft brown eyes. “You’re here whether you intended to be or not, Jongin.” His eyes looked too clear. He had to be on his first drink. Jongin’s heart stuttered and confused itself with his stomach. “And I’m okay now that you _are_ here. Okay?”

Jongin wanted to look away but he was trapped. Kyungsoo wouldn’t look away from him—he kept his gentle brown eyes and dusty lashes trained calmly on Jongin until Jongin let out a thin wisp of air and nodded. Then the actor looked down at the ground in the center of the room: a large area of carpet that had been cleared and around which everyone else was now sitting.

“You coming, Jongin?” Victoria craned her neck around Baekhyun, short black hair swinging like a veil. “We’re playing poker.”

“With what?” Kyungsoo responded, deep voice carrying far enough for her to hear him.

“With money, dumbass. For now at least. Come on.” That was one of the other actors, a guy with a big smile who Jongin liked already. Kyungsoo smiled, looking from the circle of people to Jongin, and rose to join them.

Jongin took a deep breath and followed him, sitting cross-legged across from Kyungsoo in the circle and taking his cards with a quiet sound of thanks. His hands itched and he momentarily regretted quitting smoking so soon after starting—in the past, he’d drawn it out, enjoyed the routine of taking out a cigarette and letting it smoke in his mouth. Now he bit his lip and watched as Kyungsoo collected his cards and threw a couple of bills into the center of the circle. The surety of his actions reminded Jongin of the first night he’d seen him, at a large reception for _Sunshine, My Love_. His sweatshirt fit him snugly and Jongin was suddenly thinking so hard about so many things it made his head hurt. _Paris. Ana. Her boyfriend. Whore. Luhan._ He let it all tip out of his mind and went back to what he was used to and took another sip of his drink, looking at his cards.

It was a good hand. He bet high. He got matched, and he won, and he smirked as he collected the first pile of bills and tucked them into the breast pocket of his shirt.

***

Jongin smirking was leonine and dangerous, a tanned proliferation of svelte self-conviction that Kyungsoo had trouble looking away from. Something had changed in the model since he’d arrived: an exodus of a certain nervous tension he could only assume he’d been the cause of. He hoped it meant Jongin was becoming more comfortable, although the more he looked at the model—and it was hard not to—the more he wondered if comfortable, drunk Jongin was the safest thing to let loose in such an intimate setting.

Kyungsoo could feel the heat from the liquor heating his cheeks and tore his eyes away, looking at the new hand. Dayoung was saying something in light tones that sounded like she was underwater and he blinked a few times, forcing her voice into coherence. “...and we were just kids, you know, but I really wanted to do this. I was the kind of dreamy kid who—well, obviously I wanted to be an actor, but I was the kind of dreamy kid who wanted to fly—hey, stop snickering!” She laughed and hit the actor next to her lightly. It was her turn to bet and she set down her bills as she continued.

“Anyway, so my dad had free tickets to this place out on the east coast, but then my mom got free tickets to this other place in the middle of this country, and she got three of them so I could take my friend. But my dad had paid for them. I mean none of that mattered too much—oh, showing already?” It was time to show their hands so she laid her hand down. A thin blonde with a big smile who Kyungsoo had known for a few years won, clapping her hands with childlike joy as she pocketed the money. Jongin rested his weight on one hand and stared at Kyungsoo with hooded eyes.

“None of that mattered too much,” Dayoung continued, as they were dealt new cards, “because it was really a matter of me choosing between them: between my mom and my dad. I remember this scene in the kitchen looking between them, and they were both telling me to go with the other one but I felt like I needed to choose both of them. Listen, it was awful. I had nightmares.”

“About _that_?” Victoria raised an eyebrow disbelievingly. “Who’d you choose, anyway?”

“My dad,” Dayoung replied, tucking her curtain of hair behind an ear. “He wound up being a pussy about it, though, and he didn’t even dive with me. I could’ve brought a friend.” She sighed. “Disaster, o disaster.”

Kyungsoo watched Jongin smile quietly at Dayoung’s story, his torso now leaning against one of the sofas, an arm draped lazily across the cushions, his hand dangling like a lion’s paw. Victoria made sure the alcohol didn’t stop and discussion flitted across the circle in a comfortable net as money exchanged hands and nobody really got richer. The conversation started to get looser as their bodies got lighter, expletives drifting across bills. Kyungsoo watched as Jongin’s hair got more ruffled as it got later from his hand running through it.

Then, as the game seemed to tread water: “Nobody’s making any money tonight. There aren’t many people here, anyway.” It was Baekhyun’s smooth voice, adam’s apple bobbing as his hand passed over his face. “How about an article of clothing for every bet.”

“What time is it?” Dayoung was distinctly tipsy, the tip of her nose pink. “I’m not playing strip poker before midnight.”

The blonde model looked at a big rose gold rolex on her wrist. “It’s after one, honey.”

That set Dayoung giggling, and then she sighed. “Fuck it, it’s hot in here anyway. I’m in.”

Everybody else was in as well. Jongin’s smirk just widened to a cheshire smile, twisting Kyungsoo’s stomach. The model had been noticeably quiet all night.

Five minutes later, it was Kyungsoo’s bet first, and he spared a moment to question how he’d gotten here, to a back room of a hotel in Busan playing strip poker with Jongin, and then the alcohol surged and flooded the thought and it receded, to reappear in his dreams. He took off his sweatshirt. He wore a tight white undershirt underneath; it was leagues cooler and he couldn’t help sighing in relief.

Dayoung wore only a tight, long-sleeve red shirt, so she was left laughing into her hand with only a glossy black bra. But she wasn’t shy; as an actress Kyungsoo had seen her in her bra a few times. She had the hint of abs and a few blond hairs as the suggestion of a happy trail on her flat stomach, disappearing into dark-wash skinny jeans.

The blonde had on a sweatshirt, so she was left with a tank top; Baekhyun was left in an undershirt similar to Kyungsoo. Jongin took his time, not bothering to sit up from his reclining position. He unbuttoned his shirt slowly, starting from the top and letting his shirt fall open to reveal an expanse of waxed smooth tan skin. When Kyungsoo blinked up to his face he realized the model was watching his reaction steadily, the corner of his mouth quirked up. Dreamlike, his body engaged and he moved forward fluidly so he could pull the crisp dress shirt from his body. He then returned, shirtless, to his reclining position, leanly muscled body taking steady breaths. He raised an eyebrow at Kyungsoo and Kyungsoo blinked quickly, realizing how intently he’d been staring.

The next round of betting, Kyungsoo checked, running a nervous hand through his hair. The next article of clothing was pants, and everyone checked around until Jongin, who took another look at his cards and then another sip of his drink, finishing it. Then he stood, standing in the easy manner of someone used to being looked at, and began undoing his belt. Other people in the circle were saying things, whistling and sweet-talking him, but he was still quiet, still looking at Kyungsoo. His pants dropped smoothly and he was left in black boxers with little yellow bananas in a pattern on them. He sat back down.

Kyungsoo folded—he had a bad hand, he was out, he kept his pants on. Dayoung folded. Baekhyun folded. The blonde dropped her pants to reveal delicate pink boyshorts to match her bra. A few others. It was all slow-motion now to Kyungsoo, all tinged with the dreamlike aura of the soft light of their little room.

The round came to a close and the people remaining in the game showed their cards.

Jongin won. Kyungsoo laughed, a cathartic laugh, and stood up shakily, wobbling towards the drink cart. “We should probably go soon,” he heard himself saying over his shoulder as he tipped the decanter nearly vertical to coax some liquid from it. It fell without splashing into the wide bottom of his cup.

When Kyungsoo turned around, Baekhyun was standing, hands in his pockets, and Victoria had moved up to the couch, murmuring to one of the other actors. Kyungsoo turned farther, eyes flitting across the red plush furniture. No lean, tanned body in sight—in fact, no Jongin at all. But it felt like he’d only had his back turned for a moment.

A swell of panic threatened to choke Kyungsoo. Jongin had only just returned—to what? To tease him? To strip in front of him and smirk a little and call himself an apparition and ask if Kyungsoo was okay when the answer was clearly _no._

He excused himself politely from Victoria and found himself breathing gasps of the cool air of the lobby. It glittered with pale beige marble and dressed-up elegance and light jazz played in the background. And there he was, swinging his shirt back on with a flourish, his hell disappearing around the corner of a hallway.

“Jongin!” His voice echoed hollowly against the smooth, harsh surfaces, and he jerked into motion in the direction Jongin had gone. When he rounded the corner he had to stop short; it appeared that his voice still held some sway with Jongin, for the model was waiting for him, leaning against the wall with one foot propped against it. Facing him, Kyungsoo repeated, “Jongin.” It was more an exhale of breath.

“That’s my name.” Jongin let out a shaky breath. Kyungsoo looked closer: Jongin looked relaxed, his hands calm in his pockets, but his eyes were having trouble settling in one place and his breathing looked shaky under his hastily buttoned shirt. He hadn’t bothered with the top few buttons.

“Jongin, why’d you run out? What’s going on?” Kyungsoo was loathe to sound desperate, but he was sure that he stood on justified ground here: he deserved an explanation.

Jongin dropped his foot, standing up straight so he could look over Kyungsoo’s head and avoid eye contact. He opened his mouth to speak. It moved for a few seconds, but nothing seemed to actually happen. Finally, Jongin got out a sentence: “It was... hot in there.”

Now it was Kyungsoo’s turn to raise his eyebrow. “Jongin, what happened in Paris? Or I mean—I guess I’d just like to know why you came back.” The end of his sentence came out gentler than he’d begun; there was a helplessness shining through Jongin’s eyes against his will, and Jongin’s shoulders were drawing in on themselves. Taking a chance, Kyungsoo took a step forward, into Jongin’s space, and was rewarded with a shuddering breath out from the model, fanning Kyungsoo’s face.

“I just wanted to come back for you,” Jongin said, swallowing and squeezing his eyes shut like the alcohol was sabotaging him. “I’m... not... what you probably need but you fucking called me.” He took a deep breath, like Kyungsoo’s smell calmed him. Kyungsoo placed a steadying hand on Jongin’s hip. The model’s skin was hot through the fabric of his shirt.

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo replied. “But coming back and playing strip poker with me wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

That earned him a huffing laugh from Jongin, and a mumbled “autopilot.”

“Autopilot, hm?” Kyungsoo repeated, swaying yet farther forward, his lips at Jongin’s neck. He kissed it and it rippled, but not in a good way; he felt Jongin’s torso tense along with his neck as he stilled.

“Kyungsoo...” Jongin’s voice cracked and it sounded like he was in pain. Kyungsoo stepped away quickly.

“I’m sorry—Jongin, I’m sorry,” he said softly, giving Jongin distance. The model seemed to shake himself like a cat, clenching his jaw, smiling tightly at Kyungsoo.

“It’s not your fault,” Jongin replied. “Too many monsters hanging out in my head right now. I have a room here, though, if you just want to—” it sounded like his throat was having trouble forming the words— “hang out.”

Kyungsoo nodded and they turned like one creature to make their way down the hallway to the elevators, their shoes quiet on the thick carpet. The elevator ride felt empty, so Kyungsoo said the first thing that came to his mind. “They say you’re supposed to conquer your monsters,” he murmured. “That you’re supposed to feed the good wolf instead, and all that.”

Jongin didn’t reply right away. The first thing he replied was, “I thought I came back for _you._ ” But when Kyungsoo didn’t reply to that, he said, “I’m just afraid to fight them right now. Or maybe I’ve always been. It’s so much easier to just keep them well-fed and in the dark.”

Kyungsoo gave a surprised laugh—he had no response to counter the pessimism in Jongin’s words.

Soon they arrived at Jongin’s room and Kyungsoo found himself laughing yet again as Jongin immediately fell onto the bed on his back, arms outstretched like he expected a crucifixion. _I’ve laughed more in one night than in one month_ , he thought.

“How was the trip?” Kyungsoo asked, deciding to lighten the conversation a little.

“Mmm.” Jongin rumbled, and Kyungsoo could’ve sworn he could see Jongin’s chest vibrating. The lights were off but the lights from the city filtered brightly through the window, like the two of them sat in a viewing box for a brightly lit stage production of moving lights and metal. “I’d say the trip was boring,” Jongin said quietly, his voice rising like steaming honey, “but I’m not really that irreverent. Paris is more crowded and a little dirtier than it’s cracked up to be, but it’s still very French, especially if you know where to go. And flying into Busan, especially if you haven’t been home in a while... well, I’m sure you know.”

“Glad to know you’re willing to share _some_ feelings,” Kyungsoo replied, sitting on the edge of the bed facing the window. They were facing another apartment building but he couldn’t see inside any of the windows and most of them were dark anyway.

“It’s only fair,” Jongin pointed out, rising to his elbows, his hair falling across his forehead. “I didn’t say a word on the phone and it was awful, it really was.”

“Well.”

“Come on, I’m not stupid.”

“At least you picked up. Step one of being a friend is you pick up.” Kyungsoo watched Jongin’s chest swell and his jaw clench. He sighed and rubbed his eyes; they felt unsteady, like they might roll out of his head, and his eyelids were leaden. He was _tired._

“We could just go to sleep,” Jongin offered meekly, watching Kyungsoo with unsure eyes. “We’re both pretty tired, and we could talk in the morning? Count me embarrassed, I’m supposed to be used to this lifestyle, or something.”

Kyungsoo was already nodding along with him. “Yeah, of course. You must be jetlagged, too.” He fished his phone out of his pocket to notify his manager that he wouldn’t be there for breakfast tomorrow morning—the man had a tracker on his phone and had no qualms invading his privacy.

When he looked back at Jongin, the model had his phone out as well but his face had lost all its color. “Jongin?” Jongin didn’t seem to hear him, his eyes travelling back and forth on the screen frantically until he came to the end of whatever he’d been reading and then he just stared at the screen until his eyes watered. Kyungsoo shook him, and finally plucked the phone from his hands, forcing Jongin to look at him with a firm hand under his chin, remembering in the back of his mind another time he’d made Jongin look at him like this. “Jongin, what is it?”

Jongin blinked and his eyes watered, a drop slipping out the corner of one of his eyes. “N-nothing,” he stuttered, jerking out of Kyungsoo’s grasp and beginning to unbutton his shirt.

“ _Damn_ it, Jongin, it’s not _nothing_! You’re a shade, you’ve got monsters, what-the-fuck-ever—the point is, it’s not nothing!” Kyungsoo wasn’t shouting but he wasn’t speaking calmly either, his voice excited and rough and frustrated.

Jongin stood with his shirt half unbuttoned, like he’d forgotten what to do with his hands, his eyes wide. He looked like he stood in a boat in the middle of the ocean and Kyungsoo had just told him to swim home. Kyungsoo swept a hand over his face. “Are you ever going to tell me about Paris?”

Jongin’s eyes darkened, and at least Kyungsoo knew that look. The model’s hands started working again and his shirt came off as he moved toward the bathroom. “Paris is nothing,” Jongin said finally, as he disappeared into the bathroom. “I’m taking a shower.” And he slid the door closed, leaving Kyungsoo to an empty, dark hotel room and his thoughts.

And Jongin’s phone.

Which, if Jongin hadn’t changed _that_ much, Jongin never locked. Kyungsoo stared at it for all of a minute before picking it up and opening it. No; Jongin still didn’t have a passcode for it, and the last page Jongin has been on still glowed from the screen. _Man dies in mad dash across main Paris boulevard._ It wasn’t a long article—some forgotten report in the back of a Parisian newspaper which Jongin’s phone had translated for him.

He heard the water start in the bathroom for the shower and jumped, closing the phone again and biting his lip. What did a car accident have to do with anything? At all? And how had Jongin in fact _found_ him in Busan? He sat in the dark and stared at the bathroom like he could stare right through to Jongin’s soul and stare its secrets out.

But he could not, and his mind wandered even more. He couldn’t get Jongin’s smirk out of his mind, or his white shirt hanging against his chest. The first night they’d met was such a distant memory Kyungsoo was having a hard time remembering what Jongin’s lips felt like: every time he tried to think about it, it felt more like he was imagining them, rather than remembering them.

Jongin came out of the shower with beads of water sitting on his skin and dripping from his hair, looking distinctly calmer. He’d changed into a soft-looking black cotton t-shirt and grey sweatpants, and thus prepared for bed, he tipped the side lamp on and shut out the lights of the city, leaving them illuminated by a dim yellow glow.

Kyungsoo was opening his mouth to speak when he heard Jongin’s honeyed rumble, returned almost to the warmth for which he remembered it back when Jongin had been just a houseguest. “I’m sorry, Kyungsoo.”

“You don’t have to be—”

“I haven’t forgotten the way you looked at me when you asked me to stay,” he said quietly as he slid under the covers, until it was just his head poking out of the sheets. “Just... I’m here now.”

And he lay there with the covers all the way up to his chin and watched Kyungsoo with attentive eyes as Kyungsoo toed off his shoes and slid into the other side of the bed, onto his side so he was facing Jongin.

“I wish you could see the innocence I see,” Kyungsoo murmured. “Get some sleep, okay?”

Jongin blinked at him with pouty lips and nodded obediently. “Okay. Goodnight, hyung.”

“Goodnight.”

The light switched out, and Kyungsoo settled down to listen to Jongin’s breath steadying.

He didn’t cry that night.

***

He was running and he couldn’t breathe. He was nowhere. Jongin could feel only the acute panic like vice in his chest, pushing him faster until he couldn’t feel his legs but for that they were pumping and he was running and it wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t getting away. He looked behind him, his hair obscuring his view of the shades that pursued him. The number shifted and sometimes it was just a roiling black cloud, churning toward him and intent on coughing him from existence. But other times he could distinctly see Luhan’s face, pale and fully formed shining from that darkness, his eyes flashing red like the eyes of the demons in the stained-glass windows in the church in Paris.

And there was Ana, her pale hair turned white and streaming behind her in a long wave, her form ever-faster on his heels. And there was the young redhead he vaguely remembered from university, except now her hair was fiery and her face looked like retribution and disaster. He tried to run faster and he couldn’t breathe.

He looked behind him and now he could see something emerging behind the rest. He squinted. He couldn’t tell who or what it was—it pursued it, so was it another demon? Was it there to chase away the others? He slowed and felt the heat of the apparitions on his heels and a new fear gripped him and he jolted, turning.

Now he ran straight through a huge arched doorway and into a vaulted ballroom, the kind where fancy press conferences and parties were held. It was empty and his footsteps echoed hollowly and Jongin drew in raggedy breaths. The demons were gone. Now there was one figure in the center of the room, waiting for him. But just as soon as he was close enough to identify them he passed into another room like falling, a smoky room from some party deep in his memory, and now he saw Kyungsoo clearly, reclining on a couch, waiting for him.

***

“Hyung?” The sound drifted into the darkness and hung there, hovering in silky darkness. Kyungsoo felt himself falling softly from his dreams, the kind he forgot the moment he dreamt them. He kept his eyes closed, moving his tongue around experimentally in his mouth.

“Hm.”

“Hyung, are you awake?” The deep rumble of Jongin’s voice vibrated toward him from just there, just next to him. So close he could feel the heat and where the bed dipped and the tautness of the blanket above them.

“Mmm. Sorta.”

Jongin fidgeted a little, wriggling closer until Kyungsoo felt a long, hot arm slip over his stomach and a long, hot body slide up behind him, warm air puffing over his head. “Hyung, I...”

Kyungsoo could feel what had woken Jongin up: he was hard and currently he was lying so that his cock was flush with Kyungsoo’s ass. Kyungsoo felt the heat radiating from the boy behind him heating his cheeks and wake him the rest of the way up. He swallowed to clear his throat, his breathing sounding loud in the sleeping darkness. “I thought you had too many demons,” he murmured, since Jongin had just buried his head in Kyungsoo’s neck and decided not to finish his sentence.

“I had a dream,” Jongin mumbled in reply, his hips bucking up gently, fingers curling against Kyungsoo’s stomach guiltily. “They weren’t in the dream. They don’t come at night. My demons are angels with face paint and broken hearts—they don’t come out at night.”

“A dream?” Kyungsoo briefly wondered if Jongin was awake; he sounded nearly nonsensical.

“I don’t remember,” Jongin lamented, and Kyungsoo could feel his lips pouting, forming the words like little kisses against his neck. “I just... want...” he seemed totally inarticulate, needy. Sober but for his addiction to Kyungsoo’s flesh.

“Tell me,” Kyungsoo commanded, voice low and even.

“For you to turn around, Hyung,” Jongin said, his fingers, pulling slightly on Kyungsoo’s stomach like they could petulantly get Kyungsoo to move. Kyungsoo bit back a smile and turned in bed so that he was facing Jongin, their faces inches apart. Now he could see the outline of the model in the blue glow of the alarm clock behind him, in stray strands of static hair sticking up and the suggestion of his shoulders and hips. The rest was a silhouette and Kyungsoo was reminded of what Jongin had said before, about being an apparition.

“Okay.” Kyungsoo had a restlessness sitting in his gut now, a restlessness that had been there for a while, since the beginning of the night, or maybe the week, or maybe the month. But he kept it there, vigilant, waiting. “Now what?”

Jongin’s hand slid from his stomach up his skin until it caught on Kyungsoo’s shirt, and then up until he was running his fingers up the actor’s neck and down his jaw, bringing it forward until Jongin finally tipped his lips up to kiss Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo’s reaction was viscously fierce and instantaneous: he rose above Jongin and opened the other’s mouth with his lips in a powerfully dominant kiss, sucking Jongin’s tongue into his mouth and bearing down on his lips with searing intensity. He put an elbow on either side of Jongin’s head and lay across Jongin like that, keeping the other effectively still, and took what he’d been waiting for since he’d had his first taste.

Jongin whimpered beneath him, opening his mouth completely and kissing back with wanton need, his body still trying to buck upwards despite being constrained. When Kyungsoo thread his fingers through Jongin’s hair to keep his head in place, Jongin let him hold his head back for better access to his mouth, and he kissed back, and with each new level of intensity Jongin shivered a little at the base of his spine and kissed back and matched Kyungsoo and gave Kyungsoo his mouth.

But Kyungsoo gave no breaks and seemed intent on sucking Jongin’s soul from his body, moving again to push one of Jongin’s hands above his head and hold it there. Sucking on Jongin’s bottom lip only to crush it with his own lips again. Until finally Jongin shuddered in on himself, the opposite way he had before, chest stuttering and hand clutching at Kyungsoo’s back. “Hy--ng...”

Kyungsoo drew a few inches away, a piece of hair curling and falling in front of his forehead as he watched Jongin with pupils blown to cover his irises, breathing heavily. He licked swollen, glistening lips.

“Ju-st—” Jongin hiccuped— “G-go gen-ntly-y...” He squeezed his eyes shut and Kyungsoo saw infant tears glistening in their corners. But already Jongin’s need had taken over again and he’d opened up, baring his neck, his legs falling apart in the bed. Kyungsoo moved in between them and took a deep breath, filling his chest and letting it empty completely, appreciating the image of his breath ruffling Jongin’s hair. His hair, the glisten of a drop of sweat and a starry eye: details he could catch in the glow of the alarm clock.

Kyungsoo leaned forward and kissed the corner of Jongin’s jaw slowly. Then he stayed there, letting his tongue sweep from the corner down his jaw to his chin. When he got to Jongin’s mouth he pulled a hair’s breadth away. “I’ve got you,” he murmured. “My Innocent.” He reached down and hooked one of Jongin’s legs around his waist, locking their lips again. This kiss, he teased Jongin, pulling back and pushing forward, nipping at corners but never straying towards overwhelming.

When overwhelming came, he wanted to be all Jongin could think about.  

He slid his hands down to the bottom of Jongin’s shirt and pushed it up to his armpits until Jongin lifted his arms and allowed himself to be stripped. Kyungsoo let the image of him during poker earlier to drift through his mind as he kissed down Jongin’s neck to his nipple, swirling around it with the very tip of his tongue as the model tried to buck up against his body, whining.

But Kyungsoo was true to Jongin’s plea for gentleness, so each time he gave the suggestion of wetting the other’s skin for a hickey he’d draw away just at the moment he allowed his teeth to brush skin, smirking at the low, frustrated rumble in Jongin’s throat. Eventually he unbuckled Jongin’s belt and slid his pants down, smiling when Jongin practically kicked them off and locked his legs around Kyungsoo’s waist. There was lube and a condom in the drawer in the side table. Jongin’s body burned with heat.

He could feel Jongin shudder and ripple around him at the first finger. “ _Fuck._ ” He didn’t know who’d spoken, himself or Jongin—all his focus was on the slide of his finger and the clench of Jongin’s body and Jongin was kissing sloppy, openmouthed kisses below Kyungsoo’s ear and his body was arching beneath him.

He felt Jongin’s toes curl as he slipped in a second finger, gently probing in a rocking rhythm, each motion forward a silent command _open up open up_ and maybe it meant more. Jongin let his head fall back on his pillow and his neck curved upward to mirror the shape of his body and Kyungsoo sucked on it softly as he brought another finger to Jongin and brushed the place that made Jongin tremble. He could feel it like he’d been vested with the power of God: brush there and then against his abdomen Jongin’s stomach would clench and his breath would puff out hot or he’d hiss or he’d whimper stuttered, hot _ah_ s.

Jongin’s legs fell even farther open when Kyungsoo rolled on the condom, and his tendons offered supple submission when Kyungsoo pushed his knees up, pressing the tip to Jongin’s entrance. He felt the whisper of communication; Kyungsoo leaned on Jongin’s legs and pressed his ear to Jongin’s mouth, ignoring his own shiver when Jongin simply kissed his ear with swollen, moist lips. “ _Please_.” Jongin’s voice vibrated in irregular tones and his body matched, svelte and pliable in the dim blue glow. “ _I f-forgot what it fe-lt like...”_

Kyungsoo had no idea whether he was referring to sex in general, or Kyungsoo specifically, or something else entirely. He decided now wasn’t the time to mention that he’d never fucked Jongin before and thrust forward slowly, unable to keep a low rumble from his throat as Jongin’s walls sucked him in, squeezing his length with heat that pooled in his gut, stronger than the bourbon he’d been drinking earlier. Pulling him deeper. Buried, he watched Jongin squirm for a moment; felt him, like a rider on a hot-blooded stallion; and then the model surged forward and their lips crashed together, and some of the gentleness slipped away, in its place a graceful, viscous burn.

He started to move purposefully, pulling tenderly away with his hips and then pushing back in, unable to keep up with Jongin’s kiss, barely able to keep himself hovering above the model as he moved in and out of Jongin’s tightness. Jongin was mumbling something straight into his mouth and seemed to be feeling better, bucking his hips up to meet Kyungsoo thrust for thrust with fluid undulation. It threw Kyungsoo off and he thread his fingers through Jongin’s hair and pinned his head back, baring the model’s throat and restricting his motion somewhat. Jongin complied pliantly, his neck arching backward and his body rocking with Kyungsoo’s thrusts, occasionally whining, his knees still drawn up towards his shoulders, his hands trying to scramble their way onto Kyungsoo’s back.

Again he heard Jongin say something. But now it was more clear, and more coy. He heard it through the blood pumping between his ears and the sweet heat in his gut. “ _De..eper.”_

Kyungsoo clenched his jaw in consternation, his grip on Jongin’s hair tightening inadvertently. He pulled all the way out and set his pointer finger over Jongin’s entrance, feeling it clench and flutter as Jongin let out a high, stuttering whine. Rising to his knees, he brought Jongin’s legs down and his hips up, turning him over so the model was presenting his ass on all fours.

And Jongin had the audacity to arch his back slightly and push his ass back, dropping his head so his shoulderblades stuck out like the abandoned stubs of angel wings. Kyungsoo dug his fingers into Jongin’s hips, stilling him, and pushed back in more quickly. He didn’t pretend he didn’t know where to aim for; now his thrusts came quickly and lithesome, causing a squelching and slapping of skin to echo into the darkness of their hotel room.

Jongin was making little pleased noises with each thrust, his sides trembling under Kyungsoo’s hands, his hole still pulling Kyungsoo in and clenching and building the flutter of embers and winged flames in Kyungsoo’s stomach. He was more articulate now, even as he shook more and fell to his elbows, little _yes_ es falling from his lips and the occasional “ _Kyun-ngso-o...”_ So Kyungsoo abandoned gentility and brought Jongin’s back flush with his chest, kissing the model’s neck and peppering it with nips that seemed to get the model hot and flustered as he thrust up into him from beneath.  

“I-I—” Jongin’s head fell back onto Kyungsoo’s shoulder as Kyungsoo moved one of his hands to his cock, teasing the head slightly and running two fingers down the sides in light motions as he fucked him. “ _I..._ ”

“Go ahead,” Kyungsoo replied into Jongin’s salty slick shoulder, squeezing the base without ceasing the motion of his hips. Jongin’s abdomen convulsed and he moaned in a broken rumble right in Kyungsoo’s ear, squirming under Kyungsoo’s mouth as the actor attached his mouth to his shoulder and sucked as he came.

Kyungsoo pushed him back down and pressed deep into him, pounding him with three quick thrusts before slowing as he came with a long hiccupping groan, heat flooding his cheeks and his ears, supporting himself on shaking arms atop Jongin’s shining blue back. And for a heartbeat they listened to their breathing and the pound of their bodies and felt the earth rotate as it flung about in space.

Kyungsoo roused himself once he was conscientious enough to worry about his weight on top of Jongin’s thin frame, pulling out of the comfortable heat and throwing the condom away as Jongin crawled back to his spot on the bed, curling up like a cat. Kyungsoo squinted, trying to see his expression. Too dark. Why night—why did people always have to get horny at night, when beauty hid beneath blackness?

He watched Jongin anyway, pulling the blanket back up over them. Their calves were interlocked but otherwise they slept just apart, close enough to feel each other’s heat. He’d thought Jongin was asleep when the other spoke. “Everything’s all mixed up.”

Kyungsoo didn’t respond right away. He felt like Jongin’s mind was a puzzle and it was his responsibility to decipher. But _everything_ was too vague. They’d said too much. “What do you mean?”

“It was the fucked-up angels that had me all tied up in the first place. But you—you’ve got the face of an angel if I ever saw one. So it’s all the opposite, see. I’m saved by getting fucked by the demon with an angel’s face.”

“I’m no demon,” Kyungsoo said quietly. “You’ve got it wrong. I’m the hound that chases them all away. I don’t know if that’s saving, though. Salvation is such slippery business.”

“ _Saved_ ,” Jongin insisted, his voice coming back crackly. “Because apparently, I can’t help you until you help me first. It’s unintentional quid pro quo. I’m sure I’m still fucked up. But keep calling me _Innocent_ and I might just believe you. And pull my hair the rest of the time, and I just might forget the rest.”

“Just promise we’ll talk in the morning—the metaphors are getting exhausting,” Kyungsoo whispered into the darkness, feeling his chest heavy, like an invisible giant of the darkness had carelessly stepped on it and left a cavity there.

“We’ll talk...” Jongin trailed off and Kyungsoo could hear his breathing leveling out as he finally fell asleep.

***

It was rather a fast turnaround for a designer to ask him to walk the same day, even in light of his reputation in the industry. Still, it paid well and they were respected and Jongin actually liked their understated streetwear; he thought his slim profile would nicely offset the stocky, muscled models they usually used. He shook hands with the man sitting across from him, a vague breeze of guilt blowing through him.

He hadn’t left totally abruptly this morning. His rules were just stronger than anything else, that’s all. He’d left a note at five a.m., the bags under his eyes dragging his heels against the carpet as he collected his wallet and slipped out the door. He’d be back. He’d gone out to breakfast and then gone to look for work. So maybe they wouldn’t talk that morning. But he was still determined to talk to the actor. He thought that he was probably addicted to talking to him, truly addicted for the first time in his life, in the sense that he would wind up talking to Kyungsoo even if he tried not to.

It felt good to be home, to eat a Korean breakfast and to take interviews for jobs in Korean. He worked all day and ate lunch at work. He was polite and bowed so much his waist hurt. He was changed from outfit to outfit. He was used to it and it felt comfortable.

The show was early—a show for the early birds, at seven, so that the reception could be well-attended and the designer could solicit endorsements. The whole walk Jongin found his mind wandering like it usually didn’t. He kept his face blank like he was supposed to but his mind was wondering what Kyungsoo was doing. How hurt he was, or if he was at all.

When the show ended Jongin discovered he was tired; the music cut abruptly and he was left with a vague floating feeling, like the upbeat music had been keeping him going and now he was left without a propeller. The heavy fabric of his clothing weighed him down and his makeup felt like plated armour over his skin.

Naturally he didn’t look up when someone shorter than him brushed by him backstage, except that he recognized the scent from somewhere and his head rose a little, his eyes roving the area. He didn’t see anything and continued to the dressing room, a long room of muted greys and wood chairs and mirrors and makeup and clothes strewn about haphazardly. Everyone else had already changed so Jongin was alone to shrug off his jacket and drape it over the back of a chair, rolling his stiff neck.

He jumped when he heard the door close, whirling.

“I thought you had work,” he said when he saw who it was, stumbling back a quick step to the counter and licking his lips. “I thought you were filming.”

“I filmed this morning,” replied Kyungsoo casually, his hands in his suit pockets. Jongin didn’t bother asking why Kyungsoo was fully dressed in a tuxedo. “And I’ve got to go back later for a night shoot. But I thought I might as well stop by this fascinating fashion show and—well, look who I’ve found.” His eyes sparkled mysteriously.

“Hyung, I really was going to come back. I’ve been working all day. It’s—it’s impulse and I really can’t control it at this point, I just—I get up, and—” he was silenced when Kyungsoo opened his mouth, his lower lip hanging down plump, like he intended to shush him.

“It’s alright,” Kyungsoo replied, voice low and velvety. Come here, Nini.”

Jongin hesitated, but Kyungsoo just stood there, undoing his bowtie and letting it fall loose around his neck as he waited patiently. So he went over to the actor, getting close enough that the actor had to tilt his head up to meet Jongin’s eyes. And then Kyungsoo moved forward, slipping his arms around Jongin’s narrow waist and pulling him closer, resting his cheek against Jongin’s chest. Sighed deeply, shuddering; Jongin could feel the tension slowly filtering out of his tendons. Jongin stood rigidly for a moment, confused, before relaxing and encircling Kyungsoo in turn with his own long arms, pulling him close and burying his lips in the hair on top of Kyungsoo’s head.

They stayed like that for a long time—long enough for Jongin to become accustomed to Kyungsoo’s breathing against his thin shirt and his faint heartbeat. Finally Kyungsoo sighed and pulled away, a satisfied smile hovering on his face. “Thanks,” he murmured. “Long day.”

“Here.” Jongin pulled out one of the makeup chairs for Kyungsoo and one for himself, finding it amusing that the setup looked almost like he was interviewing Kyungsoo, or visa versa. “Sit down.” Kyungsoo did, letting one leg hang long and taking off his jacket. Jongin tried not to oogle suited-up Kyungsoo too much, but it was a moot point; Kyungsoo was already raising that eyebrow. Jongin raised both his eyebrows defiantly.

“Do you play a businessman, is that it?” he asked.

“Something like that,” Kyungsoo replied, running a hand through his hair.

Jongin watched as the long back strands flopped back into place. “Tough day?” He reached for the makeup remover and started on his makeup; might as well, he thought, if he was here anyway.

“Action scene.”

“With you?”

“They tried.”

“But?”

“I can’t shoot a fucking gun.” Jongin looked over at Kyungsoo through the mirror. The actor was playing with the fabric of his bowtie, the muscles of his jaw twitching, his eyebrows furrowed. “I used to dream of being in action movies just like this. If I’d known the title, _Flight to Gwangju_ would have been on my bucket list, career-wise. My parents knew that too. But they never really cared very much. I mean, but maybe they did after all. They paid for me to go to acting school. And who knows how.”

“Well, what did they do?” Jongin was done with his makeup remover and moved on to wipes to get the oil off his face.

“Officially, my mom stayed at home and took care of us and my dad was a businessman. He sold soap. Maybe I should have known you can’t make that much money selling soap, I don’t know. But one day I came home and there were people in my apartment who I’d never seen before.” Kyungsoo licked his lips, avoiding eye contact and taking a shuddering breath.

“But I felt like I _knew_ them, you know? I think I’d smelled them before, on my dad’s suits or something. There was only three of them, one guy giving orders and then two hired guns, or maybe not—but they listened to him. And my parents were just kneeling in the middle of the living room next to each other, heads bowed, as these guys tore my childhood apart.”

Jongin had stopped moving. “Ho—” he choked, his throat betraying him. “How old were you?”

Kyungsoo laughed sardonically. “This can’t have been more than a year ago. I remember an old truck I used to play with when I was little was sitting there on the floor right next to my dad’s knee.” He paused. “Like it was mocking me. Anyway, when the boss saw _me_ he knew he was, he was just over the moon, you know? He was so _sick_. He greeted me super nicely and introduced himself as one of my dad’s friends and said he’d heard so many good things about me. But then he brought me in front of my parents and neither one of them would look at me or say anything. My mom was crying and I’d never seen her cry.” He swallowed.

“They gave me a loaded gun and a guy stood with a gun to my head so I wouldn’t shoot them. Then the said I had to choose.” Kyungsoo stopped.

Jongin blinked and turned from the mirror, taking off the thin bracelet he’d been wearing and going back to his seat next to Kyungsoo. He felt sick and he wasn’t thinking about dinner anymore and he barely wanted to ask the next thing. “Choose?”

Kyungsoo still wouldn’t look at him. “I’ve never told anyone this,” He whispered, his voice barely audible. “You have to promise not to go to the police, or—or anything like that.”

“Of course not.” Jongin’s voice sounded like a shout next to Kyungsoo’s, rough and base.

“Between them,” Kyungsoo explained. “I had to choose which one to kill—my mom or my dad. They thought it was amusing, I guess. I don’t know. I tried not to, tried to point it at one of them anyway so they’d just kill me, but then my mom yelled at me to kill her. And then my dad yelled at me... you get it.”

Jongin had no response. But when Kyungsoo didn’t say anything else, he finally said, “So did you... did they survive....”

“Did I choose?” Kyungsoo’s laugh was the saddest Jongin had ever heard. “Yes, I chose. I chose to kill my father. I don’t even remember if it was because he begged the hardest, or because somewhere in the back of my mind I blamed him for everything. Or maybe it was some twisted Freudian jealousy complex, and I wanted my mom to myself. It doesn’t matter. The point is I shot him.”

“I’m sure your mother forgives that.”

“She was mad I didn’t kill her. She was hysterical with grief. She barely recognized me anymore. I think she probably knew what was going to happen anyway.” Kyungsoo’s eyes were far away in the memory.

“What do you mean she knew?” Jongin was aware that he was sitting far forward in his chair and leaned back a little, not wanting to invade Kyungsoo’s personal space.

“They killed her after I killed him. Point-blank in front of me. It didn’t really matter who I chose because they were going to kill both of them in the first place. But it was a clever way to fuck somebody up.” Kyungsoo finally looked up, offering Jongin a crooked smile. Jongin caught the glisten of tightly restrained tears held on the surface of his eyes.

“So now you can’t shoot a gun,” Jongin said softly. Kyungsoo ran his hand through his hair again and nodded. “Well, I don’t blame you,” Jongin said. He was hyper-aware that there was something else he should be saying, something profound and overreaching that could touch Kyungsoo’s soul and soothe it. But his tongue was dumb and clumsy in his mouth and his mind just as muddled. He clung to the hope that Kyungsoo felt better after telling him—after telling somebody. Then he remembered something.

“Kyungsoo?” Kyungsoo looked up at him. “I still wish you wouldn’t cry about it. I still think your laugh is much sweeter.”

“Sweeter,” Kyungsoo repeated. “A strange adjective for a laugh.”

Jongin opened his mouth and closed it, befuddled. Kyungsoo sighed and took off his bowtie entirely, rising from his chair and standing over Jongin’s to his hands on the armrests. “You know what you’re good for?” He asked.

“W-what?” Jongin replied, blinking at the sudden intimacy of Kyungsoo’s cologne and heat.

“Vague metaphors and kissing,” Kyungsoo replied, stealing a loud, plump kiss.

“Did I help at all?” Jongin asked as Kyungsoo dove in for another. But Kyungsoo didn’t answer, instead opting to take his mouth and invade it with his tongue.

***

author's note: an obnoxiously long chapter, I know. I hope some questions are answered. And yes, now you all know how dirty I get. Oops. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!! and of course, comment your thoughts, feelings, reactions, questions, your omg's and your  _how tf does that poop even come out of ur brain_ s.


	7. Shadows Flee

_note: a glaring error was kindly made aware to me; for those of you who embarrasingly read this chapter before it was corrected, my apologies: it has now been corrected, and you might want to read the end again. uh... welcome to the writing process?_

_warnings: sex and puppies. Not together but. You know. They're both. In here._

“Hey, what’s bothering you?”

Jongin blinked, his eyes coming into focus under long, shadowy lashes. “Hm?”

“What’s bothering you, I said.” They were sitting out on a sunny veranda, on something like the tenth floor, an army of empty and crisply set tables guarding Kyungsoo’s back as he watched Jongin lounge before a the backdrop of Busan’s squatting suburbs and sprawling highways.

Jongin took a breath like coming out of a reverie and glanced quickly down at his empty plate before looking back up at Kyungsoo. “Ah, well. My ass hurts.” He smiled, squinting against the glittering sun, when Kyungsoo chuckled, his skin shifting supply from tan to tanner. “No, but actually...” Jongin gave a little comfortable sigh, settling deeper into his wicker chair and looking at some invisible being floating above Kyungsoo’s head. “I miss my dogs. I never like to leave them at my parents’ for too long. I don’t like them to forget who their owner is. I don’t want them to forget that they love me.”

Kyungsoo watched Jongin confess this with abandon and let it shine there for a moment, fiddling with his napkin. Then he said, “Or for them to forget that you love them.”

That got Jongin to smile. “That too,” the model said, glancing back up at Kyungsoo, a breeze ruffling his coffee hair. Still, he seemed like he had something on his mind. “Are you planning to live here—Busan I mean—for a while? Or are you gonna hop back and forth. To you apartment, you know.”

Kyungsoo frowned. “No, that apartment’s going to be empty until I’m done filming at least. I don’t think we’ll base promotions out of Busan, but we’re filming here, anyway. I’ll give you a spoiler for the movie, if you want.” He smiled, feeling his cheeks lifted by some conspiracy between the sunlight and the wind. “The flight never really makes it to Gwangju. Not enough to really film there, at least.”

Jongin gave a low, rumbling laugh. “You’re ruining it for me!” He seemed lighter now, like something had flown away from his eyebrows and now he was dancing with the sun even as he sat still as can be, arms draped over the armrests of his chair, laughing with Kyungsoo.

“Yes, well.” Kyungsoo swallowed, looking down at his napkin. “Provided it ever gets finished. I see the poor writers locking themselves away for hours trying to make a version where my character doesn’t shoot anybody. But that’s what they made the film around.”

“Dumbasses, all of them!” Jongin declared. “You sir strike me as the sort to use your fists when it comes down to it!” and he had Kyungsoo giggling again, covering his mouth and shaking his head.

“You should come, then,” Kyungsoo said, sitting a little straighter in his seat as he observed Jongin’s eyes following the path of a waiter to come give them their check. “To the set. Hey, I know you want to, nini.”

Jongin’s mouth had shut tight and his jaw clenched—he’d fallen out of synchronization with the sun and now it looked as if they were at odds. “I don’t want to interrupt your work, hyung,” Jongin said quietly, his words feathery and insubstantial in the wind.

“Well _I_ want you to!” Kyungsoo exclaimed in exasperation. “You’re a welcome distraction anytime from the monotony of any job! I’ll make it worth your while.” He made his voice low and velvety and watched as Jongin’s adam’s apple bobbed, and the boy looked away, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. Still, he stayed strong and didn’t reply, and soon the moment had been blown away by the breeze and Jongin looked at him meaningfully again proudly, as if to say, _I’m stronger than that._

Kyungsoo huffed and tried again. “I come to _your_ shows. _You_ enjoy it. I think this is unfair.

“You came to one,” Jongin corrected, raising an eyebrow.

Kyungsoo tried one last time. “If you come to the set just _once,_ I’ll take us both to your parents’ house to get your dogs and you can keep them in Youngjin’s apartment or something. Or maybe we can just keep our hotel room, it’s nice. Certainly nicer than the trailer I’m living in right now.”

That sparked Jongin’s attention, and his mouth popped open to form an O. “ _You_ live in a trailer?” His voice came out high and Kyungsoo was laughing again.

“Yeah, the height of convenience! Don’t you approve?” Kyungsoo stood up, the check paid, and chuckled as Jongin sat stuttering, speechless.

So Jongin presently promised to visit him the next day and they parted ways, Jongin standing in the doorway of the hotel with his hands shoved in his pockets, looking every part the model he was. It took all of Kyungsoo’s restraint not to turn on his heel and run right back to him.

He was halfway dressed for work that afternoon when he stopped what he was doing, standing stock still in the middle of his trailer and his mouth going dry. No: he and Jongin could not live in the same hotel room, nor could Jongin live with him in his trailer; he was expecting them any day now. They would have to relegate themselves to simple rendezvous, Kyungsoo assured himself, his motion returning as he shrugged on his shirt. So as to indicate no deviation from the norm. They were friends; Jongin meant nothing special. Friends, as far as he could understand, were too distant a relation for them to care about.

Sighing, Kyungsoo stepped out of his trailer and made his way to set, missing Dayoung’s presence already. She’d gone back to Seoul to care for her own career, though she sent him regular texts with obnoxious promotions for whatever product she was throwing her face behind, knowing he’d see it and smile. Apparently, now that he was without her, he was quiet, and as he approached the set, Youngjin and Gunho didn’t stop in their conversation to acknowledge his presence.

“... but it all radically changes the focus, is what I’m saying.” Youngjin sounded frustrated, or rather like a man trying and failing to suppress frustration.

“It solves the problem, and makes him seem heroic and _merciful_ besides.” Gunho frowned. “I wanted him because he’ll act it sympathetically. He won’t make it _mushy_ , like you put it.”

Kyungsoo took a step back. They were talking about him. Youngjin grumbled something in his deep voice about not liking it.

“Well they also said you could give him PTSD in the beginning, and then the issue would only take a few minutes here and there and that’d be it,” Gunho posited, “but I think that’s a sloppy fix.”

Kyungsoo cleared his throat and the director-producer pair jumped guiltily, dissolving into a mess of gruff grunting and jacket straightening. It was Youngjin who recovered himself first, giving a tight smile. “Why don’t we start? It’s just today and tomorrow, you know, before you’ve got that hour of hair and makeup before every workday.”

“Yeah.” Kyungsoo kept his face blank and stalked past the director onto set.

***

The next day on set was murmuring with excitement. It was their last day doing the dialogue and drama that constituted the beginning of the movie; from then on, they’d be shooting in the cramped space of the plane. Gunho had set the deadline but it was Youngjin who had to make it a reality, and his stress was bleeding through in coarser shouts and more retakes than necessary.

Kyungsoo spent the whole day looking over his shoulder for Jongin.

The model still managed to confound him, however, by appearing nonchalantly next to him at the Craft Service table, scooping a few tiny muffins onto a miniature paper plate.

“How’s the day going, hyung?” Jongin’s voice slipped over to him casual and light, and after his first initial shock Kyungsoo just stood gaping at him.

“G-good I guess. How did you get in?”

“Told them I knew you. And winked. Girl at the front’s cute.” Jongin shrugged and popped a muffin into his mouth, his cheeks enlarging like a pumping hot air balloon.

“Set’s not as exciting as _Sunshine, my Love._ ” Jongin was trying to look around inconspicuously—that is, without turning his head, so that his brows strained with the breadth his eyes were struggling to cross on their own. Kyungsoo looked out onto the grey airport set and grey concrete full of equipment.

“It’s not the sort of movie you’re going to get up dancing to. It’s _supposed_ to be made a little more dynamic by the firefights. And a grenade is supposed to go off over there—” he pointed— “by that bathroom door.”

“Is it a real bathroom?” Jongin looked relaxed in a white t-shirt and jeans, his hair ruffled and unstyled, and Kyungsoo wondered briefly if that one night really had cured him of everything.

“No, it’s not a real bathroom.” Kyungsoo smiled gently. Then he heard his name called and began to backpedal, setting the sandwich he’d been eating down purposefully onto Jongin’s plate. “Catch up to me when I’m on a break! Nobody really cares who anybody really is around here. Just say you’re with me.”

“Sure.” Jongin waved him away and Kyungsoo left him alone, proud that he’d thought to foist his sandwich upon the thin model. So airy was his momentum that they got through his next scenes in just a few takes, and in Kyungsoo’s professional opinion, none of them were his fault. Youngjin was being picky today.

They met behind the monitor to review the footage; Youngjin wanted different angles but Kyungsoo’s tears had dried up and he’d have to cry again, so it was worth Youngjin being sure. With the time constraint to boot, Kyungsoo couldn’t help but notice the bags under Youngjin’s eyes as he rewound the footage again.

“Jesus, it would probably help a little if I could sleep at night,” the man boomed, squinting red-rimmed eyes. “Hey, get me a coffee, would ya.” He addressed the man standing behind him to his left, clearly not expecting the individual to respond with:

“Maybe you have people you pay for that. It looks good to me, though. You get that tremble in his lip from the side and you wouldn’t get it straight on.”

Youngjin turned to the chocolate-haired man. “Excuse me, who are you?”

“Kim Jongin, nice to meet you.” Jongin bowed low to Youngjin, and Kyungsoo noticed him swallow. Jongin always blinked more when he was nervous.

“So I _don’t_ know you. What the fuck are you doing on my set?” Youngjin asked. Then, swivelling around in his chair and preparing to speak in his loud director’s voice: “What’s this motherf—”

“He’s with me, Youngjin. A friend of mine.” Kyungsoo cut in, blushing a little in annoyance and trying to understand Youngjin’s general frustration with the world.

“He’s with you.”

“Yeah.”

“What is he, some actor? You want him to get a part or something?”

Kyungsoo looked from Jongin to Youngjin. Jongin had been surprised by Youngjin’s outburst and as now standing more rigidly, his hands still and stiff by his sides. “No, he’s a model. He’s just a guest, he’s a friend of mine. Look, I’ll get you the coffee while you look at this, okay? And I’ll do it again if you need me to.” Kyungsoo tried to make his voice as smooth and as even as possible.

“Another guest?” Youngjin’s leg bounced on the ball of his foot as he watched the tear fall from Kyungsoo’s eye on the screen again. “Are we just letting any doe-eyed dandy on the set now?”

Kyungsoo crossed his arms. “You seemed perfectly amicable when _doe-eyed_ Dayoung was around.”

“Yeah, well I’m not gay, jackass.” Youngjin ran his hand through his hair, punching a button on the monitor. “And she was an actor, anyway. I don’t know what being able to walk pretty has anything to do with us.” He swept a disdainful gaze over Jongin, who hadn’t moved an inch.

“Youngjin, listen, I’ve just brought a guest—cool it. Let’s take a break and we can come back in, what, half an hour? You can take a power nap.”

“Fucking right I need a power nap.” Youngjin sighed. “It’s fine. Listen, Kyungsoo, it’s fine. I’m not going to make you cry again.” And he shoved his frame from the seat, his well-tailored suit coat fluttering in an artifial breeze as he strode toward his trailer, leaving Kyungsoo and Jongin in silence.

“Gunho set the deadline too soon,” Kyungsoo said quietly. He was afraid to look back up at Jongin; from his peripheral vision he could tell that the man hadn’t moved and his stoniness was scary.

Then, suddenly, Jongin gave a sharp burst of laughter. “I’m... not gay... _jackass_? I’m glad he’s not the writer for this movie. And I certainly hope he’s a good director, or else I don’t know what the fuck you guys are doing with someone so young and stupid.” He tried to finish the sentence like he was playing it off, but his voice cracked at the end, and he pressed his mouth shut, clenching his jaw.

“He is,” Kyungsoo replied. He felt he should say something more, because Jongin looked more broken than two words, two words that meant nothing, but Jongin was already turning and hurrying off toward Kyungsoo’s trailer—he must have asked a staff member which one was Kyungsoo’s earlier.

Kyungsoo ran to catch up with him. “Hey.”

Jongin’s stride was purposeful but the waves rippling off him were less antagonistic and more... broken? Kyungsoo tried touching his shoulder, and instead of being shoved away, Jongin flinched and Kyungsoo pulled away voluntarily. “You know,” Jongin said in a low, grainy drone as they moved towards their squat haven, “Maybe someday I’ll tell you my darkest secret.” Then, as if he’d surprised himself with the words, he stopped short, and Kyungsoo had to stop and walk back to stand in front of him. The lights for the dull grey set should have washed out Jongin’s face, but instead they illuminated it in a pastel, unearthly uniform sheen. Jonigin licked his lips and when he was sure Kyungsoo’s eyes were on him he repeated, “My _darkest_ secret.”

And then they were off again, and soon the door had shut firmly behind them and they’d been swept away by a tornado to another land, small and neat and warm.

The second the door swung shut behind them Kyungsoo had his hand in Jongin’s hair, pulling him down with a firm tug and pressing him into a kiss. Jongin let out a stumbling, surprised moan, off-balanced as Kyungsoo backed him into the wall, the handle of the door poking into his back. Jongin was struggling to keep up with Kyungsoo’s mouth, his torso half bent over as Kyungsoo’s tongue dipped into his mouth and drove him closer against the wall. Eventually Kyungsoo pulled away an inch, his lips plump and shining, his hand moving from Jongin’s hair to caress his head. “Thank you for coming, anyway,” he said, his voice rough and velvety.

Jongin was breathing hard and his eyelashes cast shadows on his cheekbones as he stared as if in a trance at Kyungsoo’s lips. “I...”

But Kyungsoo was already kissing him again, mouth hot against his lips, and then becoming impatient and going to his jawline, leaving a hot trail down his neck and stopping there, wetting it with saliva, and then Jongin was pushing him away, lips hanging open, shirt rumpled. “No hickies,” he choked out, reaching for the bottom of his shirt and pulling it over his head.

Bare, his abdomen rippled as he fell back against the door, eyes hooded as Kyungsoo approached him again, step purposeful and measured until there was no space between their bodies. His hands slid up Jongin’s waist, goosebumps following his touch, and instead of pulling Jongin’s head back down he simply attached his lips to Jongin’s neck, dragging a hot trail of kisses across his collarbones and pausing over his chest, letting his teeth graze the smooth skin. Again, Jongin’s hands pulled his head up, his breath fanning over tender lips. “No... hickies...” His voice was lower, and wavered between them.

Kyungsoo growled against his skin, the thin model trembling beneath him, trailing the tip of his teeth and the whole of his upper lip down the center of Jongin’s chest and over his stomach, taking slowly to his knees as he undid Jongin’s belt and pants. Soon Jongin’s cock hung heavy and hard in front of his mouth. Kyungsoo rested his hands on his thighs and looked up at Jongin, eyes big and round. “Anything to say?”

Jongin leaned against the door like he was posing for an editorial, breathing heavily and watching Kyungsoo from under his lashes. He did not answer. Kyungsoo gave a small, smug smile and dipped forward, licking at the flushed head. Jongin’s abdomen clenched in response and his hands kicked forward, brushing the sides of Kyungsoo’s hair in pleading half-gesture.

At that Kyungsoo stretched his lips around Jongin’s girth and slid down, sucking and flattening his tongue, a small slurping sound fizzling into the air. He heard a hot, loud breath fade from above. Jongin had pressed his hands hard against the wall behind him as Kyungsoo felt the tip hit the back of his throat. Jongin’s moan in that moment was, in Kyungsoo’s opinion, cute, his body vibrating slightly beneath him as he hollowed his cheeks.

“K...ng...soo...” He felt delicate fingers in his hair, a little tug from the roots at the side of his head bringing him back down, and back and down, and now Jongin’s hips bucked weakly with a vaguely fluid motion.

Soon, Kyungsoo was swallowing sweet cum as quickly as he could, rocking back on his heels and licking his lips as Jongin sagged even more against the door. Looking at him, Jongin gave an incredulous laugh. “You look so...” he said, pulling his pants back up, “...smug.”

“I’m glad you came,” replied Kyungsoo, smiling slightly, still on his knees.

Jongin gave a huffing laugh. “You already said that.” He turned his eyes to the ceiling.

“Did I?” Kyungsoo asked coyly, tilting his head. Jongin seemed somewhat recovered from his shaken state after their conversation with Youngjin, focused, as he preferred, on Kyungsoo instead as he pulled his pants back up.

Just then, the door behind Jongin fell open and Jongin tumbled backward with a yelp, his arms splaying out ungracefully in front of him as he tumbled onto the smooth concrete below the trailer. Kyungsoo shouted after him, jumping from the trailer to crouch by Jongin’s side. The model was leaning on his elbow gingerly, wincing. “Fuck, you okay?” Kyungsoo looked up, searching for the individual who’d thought it unnecessary to knock.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Jongin heaved, pressing his eyes closed for a moment. “It’s fine. Just... give me a second. Got the wind knocked out of me.”

Youngjin stood off to the side, sharp blue suit calm as ever, eyes serene and black hair sleekly styled away from his face. He had one hand in his pocket and watched them for a moment before turning and retreating to set. Kyungsoo ground his teeth. It hadn’t been anywhere near half an hour—he should have _knocked._

Presently, Jongin rose, and Kyungsoo with him. Together they sat on the step of Kyungsoo’s trailer, their knees rising nearly as high as their chests. “So,” Jongin said finally, breaking their breezy silence, “When do we leave?”

“What do you mean?” Kyungsoo frowned, playing with the stitching of Jongin’s jeans on his knees.

“To Seoul,” Jongin explained, the corner of his mouth tugging upwards and his eyes showing the beginning of a sparkle. “To get Monggu and Jjanggah. You promised if I visited you we could go get them. I’m a half-person without them, anyway.”

Kyungsoo, surprised, laughed. “I did promise that, didn’t I,” he replied, sighing and leaning against the side of the door. “Well, I guess we can leave tomorrow if you want. I know you can be packed by then, at least.”

Jongin smiled quietly in reply, and it seemed like a sad smile to Kyungsoo.

They left the next morning, blearily tumbling into a private room on the train car and leaning on each other, eyes drifting open and closed, vague conversations passing between them that wouldn’t be remembered later. It was Jongin who had bought the tickets—at every turn, Kyungsoo expected to need to step in and find them lunch, or get a cab, but he didn’t have to take care of Jongin in this way the way he did when they were in the apartment. Or emotionally, for that matter: Jongin managed travel with the practiced efficiency of his trade. Soon they were standing outside a huge apartment buliding.

“This is fine, right?” Kyungsoo asked, sounding unusually nervous.

“What do you mean?” Jongin was looking at the building with a strange expression on his face.

“I mean... me... meeting your parents...” Kyungsoo shifted on his feet. “I mean, you tell me, What. What they’re okay with, and stuff. I don’t know how close you are with them, you know.”

“Oh.” Jongin blinked and finally turned to look down at Kyungsoo. “Um. They... well, I don’t want to sound ungrateful...”

“Don’t worry about _that,_ ” Kyungsoo said quickly. “Tell me whatever you want about them. Im not going to diminish whatever grievances you have because I’m jealous you have parents.” He delivered the lines with near perfect monotone.

“Oh,” Jongin repeated. “I think it’s best to just say we’re friends. LIke we’ve been doing. Naturally, actually, you know we never ta—”

“Yeah, I know.” Kyungsoo gave Jongin a sad smile. “Comes with the territory.”

Jongin nodded. “Okay, and they only took the dogs because I told them I was in Paris working. So as far as you know, I just got back, and we’re heading to some reception or some shit after this and that’s why you’re with me. My parents and I... My mom...” He ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s just say it was a good thing for me to get out of the house. Out of _her_ house.”

Kyungsoo was nodding seriously. “Got it. I still think it’s weird.”

Jongin blushed and walked up to the door, hiding his face. Kyungsoo smirked a little as he followed the model into the building.

Soon they were sitting next to each other at Ms. Kim’s table, eyes wide as Jongin’s mother made quiet tinking sounds from the kitchen and emerged with various little dishes, kimchi and bok choy and rice that glistened and steamed. They sat facing a plain beige wall nearly covered in framed 8x11 frames, and from each stared Jongin down at them. Set behind him in some rose the letters for _Vogue_ or _Dazed_ or _Marie Claire_ or _W,_ and sometimes a multi-page editorial graced a section of the wall. The pictures seemed to stifle the movement of air in the room—when Kyungsoo slid his eyes over to Jongin, the model was doing everything he could to not look at the wall, his throat bobbing as he swallowed awkwardly.

“...that models ever crossed paths with actors, or had any reason to maintain a professional relationship. Of course it’s an honor.” Ms. Kim’s voice was awkward and husky, like she was hefting her mouth around every word she spoke.

  
“We had a photoshoot together—what was it, a year ago?” Kyungsoo heard himself saying. Ms. Kim’s eyes crinkled as she gave a pinched smile.

“Yeah.” Jongin’s mouth quirked upward. “We had a photoshoot together. We’re just on the same set right now, Mom, that’s why I brought him. We—”

He stopped at the sound of barking, body swivelling in his chair like a satellite as eight paws came scrambling on smooth hardwood floor into the room, swirling around Jongin’s feet like a fluffy righteous wind, and Jongin was down on his knees, the dimple in his cheek showing deep as he grinned and greeted his dogs.

“The brown one is Monggu and the white one is Jjanggah,” Ms. Kim said helpfully. Kyungsoo had to bite his lip to keep himself from just saying _I know._ Had to blink a couple of times to keep from rolling his eyes.

“They look so glad to see you,” he said instead, addressing Jongin. When Jongin looked back up at him, his eyes shone with unshed tears.

“They’re glad to get out of here.” It was a male voice, coming from the direction the puppies had come from, and Kyungsoo followed Jongin’s line of sight to an older, stately man with salt-and-pepper hair and big glasses. “We keep them in just those two rooms, you know. They’re big, but I’m sure our Jongin gives them more love than we could.” Jongin’s father sat down at the head of the table with a sigh.

“Oh, we take care of them fine,” Ms. Kim said dismissively, pulling out a chair for herself. “Sit down, Jongin, come on.” She watched him acutely as he reluctantly left the dogs’ level to sit stiffly in his chair, running his hand through his hair. “Now,” Ms. Kim continued, “Why don’t you tell me how the two of you first met? I’ll confess I’m a bit fuzzy on the details.”

Kyungsoo looked over at Mr. Kim, focused on the rice and eggs, then up at the wall of Jongin, then over at the model himself and reminded himself how much longer he had. He thought he was maybe starting to understand why Jongin got up in the morning like clockwork, why he was so good at telling how long things lasted.

Ten minutes, they’d said. That’s how long they should stay to be polite before fleeing with the dogs. He began to count in his head, plastering his biggest movie-star smile onto his face.

Snatches of the conversation stuck in his mind. The longer they stayed the stiffer Jongin became; the more defiant; the more eloquent in his runarounds of their questions. “You’re not working on any acting with him, are you?” His mother would ask.

And Jongin’s response found Kyungsoo’s ears: “I wouldn’t dream of it, Mom. You raised my dreams too well for them to dare. Why use my pretty face to make an expression?” And he raised his eyebrow, demonstrating the beautiful contradiction to what he’d said: Jongin’s expressions were fascinating. But then: Kyungsoo was, perhaps, biased.

It was over soon enough—Jongin carrying them out one in each hand, in large crates, his sinewy muscles straining against the weight of the dogs. Kyungsoo offered to carry one but Jongin insisted carrying both evened it out. But then, as Kyungsoo sat in the backseat of their taxi, sandwiched between two excited, fluffy dogs, he went back inside, ducking backward guiltily with a mumbled excuse like a forgotten wisp of memory fading back into the brick of the building. When he next emerged a few minutes later, Kyungsoo caught sight of his mom hovering there in the shadows behind him, her face half-hidden but her eyes hard as she spoke rapidly to her son, her mouth ballooning out as she formed her strange words.

Jongin, looking uncomfortable, soon extricated himself, stepping fluidly out the door and onto the front step. His face, too, passed smoothly from shadow to sunlight, lit dazzlingly in a moment of brilliance as the sun shone fiercely on his tan skin and the light steps. For a moment, it seemed not as that Jongin fled the shadows, his mother ensconced within them, but that _they_ fled _him_ ; that this lithe boy was too defiantly innocent to let them keep him.

And then Jongin was falling into the front seat that smelled like old noodles and had suspicious stains on it, heaving a sigh, and the driver was pulling away from the curb into the swift flow of traffic, and the moment retreated.

***

“Nini, Is it okay if we stop by my apartment? It’s only ten minutes out of the way, and I want to pick up a few books since we’re close. I forgot to bring anything to do when I left because I was with Dahyun and she’s, you know. Entertaining.”

Jongin snorted. “I don’t know, but if you says so.” He shifted, his eyes darting aimlessly across the traffic around them. “Why not just get the book there? You can give it away when you’re done with it or something. You can give it to me.”

“Jongin, you know I’d rather give you actual presents.”

“You haven’t so far, o rich and famous TV star,” Jongin shot back sardonically.

Kyungsoo huffed from the backseat and Jongin looked at him in the mirror, chest fluttering at the furrowed-brow-pout that graced his features. “I don’t see why we can’t just stop by,” the actor grumbled, idly running a hand along one of the crates and setting off a volley of barking. “And I’d get a break from the Brats,” he ruminated.

“Hyung!” Jongin was indignant now, and hoping to distract Kyungsoo from going to his apartment. From seeing what he’d seen when _he’d_ stumbled up that elevator.

“No, you know what, you can deal. We’re here for _your_ dogs, anyway.” Kyungsoo leaned forward and gave the driver his address, taking his time to sit back so that his cologne drifted over to Jongin and sliced through the smell of the moldy seats and old food. Jongin arranged his features into his best look of genuine annoyance. But he was feeling strangely victorious after their visit to his parents’. It was inexplicable; visits never went that smoothly, or rather, he never quite handled them that smoothly. And it hadn’t _really_ been Kyungsoo’s quiet, steady presence next to him. It had been _him._

Before he could protest much more they were rolling to a halt in front of Kyungsoo’s more impressive apartment building downtown, the glass more extensive and the sidewalk wider, cleaner, and busier.

They left the dogs in the car. Kyungsoo the TV star couldn’t be seen with _dogs_ in his _apartment_. Imagine the tabloids. So they bickered good-naturedly all the way to the concierge.

Jongin _did_ notice the concierge’s wide eyes when he saw Kyungsoo approaching, though, and his subtle phone call before they arrived at the desk. By the time they were there the trim youth was the picture of politeness. Kyungsoo was in a good mood. “Everything alright up there, Heon-ah?” The actor even stuck his hands in his pockets, letting his smoky voice echo in the nearly empty lobby.

“Ah—I mean, welcome back, sir. I heard you were shooting in Busan.” The concierge’s eyes darted to an unobtrusive door to his right.

“I am, but don’t tell your friends. It’s no press frenzy, now.” Kyungsoo smiled; he was play-patronizing him.

The concierge smiled nervously. “Of course not, sir. I hear Busan is lovely this time of year. I—”

“Heon, I’d love to chat with you,” Kyungsoo interrupted him, “but I’m really just here to grab a few things. I’ll be right back, okay?” And he began to walk towards the elevators. As Jongin hurried after him he almost wanted to salute the concierge for his valiant efforts at stalling the actor in his mission. Now his turn.

“Kyungsooooo. Kyungsoooieooieooie.” Jongin tugged on Kyungsoo’s sleeve as he approached the elevator, stopping him.

Kyungsoo turned around, one eyebrow raised at the unusual form of address. “Yes?”

He had nothing to say. He hadn’t thought past stopping him. “I’m worried about leaving the dogs in the car,” he said quickly, shifting on his feet.

“Hey, you’re free to go back.” Kyungsoo took a purposeful step away from him, looking around to make sure no one had seen Jongin’s familiar form of approaching him. The public didn’t even know they knew each other. “I’m just picking something up, who knew it would be such a hass—”

“Mister Do!” The door opened and a short, fat man, almost retiring age, bumbled out, eyes folded into a warm smile. “How lovely to see you back so soon! Before you go up, there are a few matters concerning your property I’d like to discuss, if you don’t mind. You don’t mind, do you? Oh, I’m so glad I caught you before you we—”

“I’m going up to my apartment,” Kyungsoo said flatly. “You can talk to me up there.” His mood had quieted down and he was finally suspicious, and therefore impossible to stop. Jongin gave up and followed him into the elevator with who he assumed was the manager, who ducked his head slightly to him; he returned the acknowledgement.

The tense silence in that whirring elevator lasted a lifetime and a second, and then they were walking down the hall in a loose formation, their shoes kissing the carpeted floor quietly until Kyungsoo stopped in front of his door, folding his arms and sweeping his gaze up the height of it. “This?” He glanced up at the manager. “This, I assume, is what you wanted to talk to me about? Concerning my property?”

“Absolutely. It absolutely is. You see, the reason we didn’t immediately remove it, sir, is we weren’t sure what _you’d_ want to do, or if you’d had any hand...”

“ _It says whore!_ ” Jongin jumped at the startling sound of Kyungsoo shouting. The words echoed wrongly about the small hallway, tinny and trapped. “ _You take it the fuck down! Why would I want to keep that?!_ ” The manager, too, was startled to terror and stood, as far as Jongin could tell, trying to make his body as still as possible, adhering to the childish notion, perhaps, that if he didn’t move Kyungsoo wouldn’t be able to see him.

“Our apologies, Sir,” he said finally the words forced from his sternum. “Truly, we meant no offense to you and please be assured that it will be gone by the end of the day.”

Kyungsoo wasn’t even paying attention to him. He was just tearing down the half hearted police tape disdainfully and pushing forward into his apartment, holding the door open impatiently for Jongin to follow. Once the door had shut heavily behind them, the actor relaxed, his muscles disengaging around his neck. He rolled his eyes as he walked toward the TV. “Fans _really_ need to understand the difference between fiction and reality,” he muttered.

Jongin stood, confused, just inside the door, awkward in his body. “Wha... what was that about?” He asked, his voice respiring thinly into the stale, unused air of the apartment.

“My character on _Sunshine, My Love_ had this controversial episode in which he’s a bit of a player. With both genders,” Kyungsoo added, eyes twinkling in memory. “Anyway, it got a lot of people pretty butthurt. More people watched the show, but I got some blowback for a while, until they made me loveable again.” Kyungsoo cracked a half-smile.

Jongin felt an absurd, sinister laugh bubble up from his navel. All that tension, the awkwardness of guarding the secret that should be someone else’s, the shame of imposition, of imposing his darkest vices onto this kind onto the only man who seemed capable of dispelling them, faded into ridiculousness. It had been someone mad at Kyungsoo. No—more absurdly, it had been someone mad at the character Kyungsoo played.

When Kyungsoo returned from retrieving the books, Jongin had controlled his laugh and was standing with his fists loosely clenched at his sides, jaw clenched. Kyungsoo went about tying up the books so he could carry them the distance back to Busan. “What is it?” He asked as he worked, seeming to sense Jongin’s frustration.

“You’re not mad?” Jongin asked, trying not to raise his voice too much. “Some sorry little shit just vandalized your property because they were salty about some show and you’re not even a little bit pissed off?”

Kyungsoo glanced up at him and then back down at what he was doing on the counter. He shrugged. “Not really. I try to stay private but I guess this comes with the business. You get some crazy shit.”

“But you can... you can litigate!” Jongin sputtered. “You can insist on a police investigation! You can make the next person who thinks about doing this afraid for their goddamn livelihood! You have enough—” _trouble with your own._ He didn’t finish the sentence.

Kyungsoo sighed, leaning on the counter to gaze at Jongin from across the apartment. “What’s that verse I’m thinking of? About endless forgiveness of your enemies?”

“How often should my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?” Jongin replied quietly.

“Ah, yes.” Kyungsoo pointed him like a proud teacher. “Seventy-seven times! I’ll forgive them unto death, Jongin! Unto judgement!” He grinned when Jongin rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t know you were so religious,” was all Jongin replied blithely.

“You bring it out in me,” Kyungsoo replied cheerily. “I never thought about it, you know. But I’m mostly kidding; I really don’t think they’ll do it again. Better to keep that endless forgiveness for yourself, Nini—we’ll have you out of that nasty habit of beating yourself up before you know it.” He was finally done with the books.

The actor returned presently from across the apartment, and Jongin realized that he hadn’t enjoyed the full focus of the actor’s attention for a while. Kyungsoo’s eyes gazed up at him wide and attentive and concerned. “You okay?” he asked. It was a routine question. It was so mundane Jongin almost said _yeah_ out of habit. But Kyungsoo had stopped to say it, and it meant that Kyungsoo remembered whatever dark night it had been when Jongin had confessed what Luhan thought of him, what they all thought of him, what Kyungsoo had heard in those light tones of Luhan’s over the phone that first day. _Whore._

“I’m okay,” Jongin replied, after a moment’s hesitation. “I’m okay now.”

Kyungsoo smiled broadly, his face transforming into a squishy puddle of content adoration. Jongin felt his heart twist. “But can we go back now?” Jongin asked. “I’ve got my dogs, you’ve got your books; maybe we’ll be okay there after all.” He meant Kyungsoo, really. He meant about the reason he’d been summoned: Kyungsoo’s parents, the revelation that had been sitting in the dregs of his mind, an insurmountable blob of _stuff_ they had yet to face.

“Ehh.” Kyungsoo’s mood was unbeatable. “We’ll be fine.” He slipped his arm around Jongin’s waist and his heat was comforting and Jongin slung his arm over the actor’s shoulders as they let the offensive word recede down the hallway away from them.

***

They were back in Kyungsoo’s sun-filled trailer. The movie had moved locations to a big hangar on the outskirts of the city where most of the airplane scenes, and therefore most of the movie, would be shot.

Kyungsoo was even happier than he’d been before and Jongin was beginning to get scared.

Dahyun had returned, bring with her the fresh scent of strawberries, newly dyed strawberry-blonde hair, and scintillating drama from the far reaches of the celebrity world. She was amazed for some reason that neither of them bothered to keep up, despite their location near the center of it. Jongin wasn’t really paying attention to her as she moved with tactile fluidity from one subject to another and Kyungsoo murmured affirmations of attention.

Jongin’s spot was towards the back of the trailer, on the wide couch that converted to a bed at night, sitting against a bright window that warmed him from behind. Kyungsoo sat at the small table and Dahyun swung her legs from her perch on the counter. “...And so now everybody’s competing. It actually took a while for us all to figure out _why_ there aren’t as many good photographers anymore—or I shouldn’t say that. As many that we all like, you know? The ones we’re used to. Turns out we were just short one important one. Did you ever do a shoot with Kim MInseok?”

Jongin’s head shot up and his pupils contracted, alert. He kept quiet. “Mmmm.” Kyungsoo mused. “I think so. Smaller guy, kinda cute looking, a whole lot more experienced than he seems on the surface?”

“Yep, that’s the one!” Dahyun was idly braiding a piece of her hair. “Anyway, apparently he disappeared off to Ilsan for some reason and isn’t taking any jobs. My one friend heard he broke up with his—” here she dramatically put her hand beside her mouth, like she was imparting a secret— “ _boyfriend_. But you two wouldn’t know anything about _that_ sort of thing, I’m sure.” She grinned at the two blushing men before her.

Finally Jongin said, “Dahyun, I love you to bits almost as much as Kyungsoo does, in his heart, at this point, but why are you actually, you know, here?”

“I don not lo—”

“Oh please, yes you do,” Dahyun shushed Kyungsoo. “I’m doing a shoot half an hour away, thought I’d stop by. Hey listen, they don’t tell you this, but you’re pretty enough for it—” Jongin tensed up at the sentence— “If you just take some nice pictures and post them on social media, and do some pictorials every once in awhile, and maybe a half hearted song or miniseries, you can roll it _in_ with the endorsements. It’s a living.”

Jongin narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re a scammer. A scammer, I tell you!”

Dahyun hopped off the counter jovially. “I’m living the high life!” she countered, checking her phone. “I do have to go, though. Soo, I’ll call you?”

Kyungsoo nodded and rose to give her a brief hug. Jongin didn’t feel like getting up, but he gave her an amused, adoring little salute from his perch as she hopped down from the trailer.

The moment she was gone Jongin’s smile dropped. “ _Fuck._ ”

Kyungsoo turned to Jongin, startled. “Excuse me?”

Jongin ran a hand through his hair, sliding down the glass behind his back until he was lying on his back on the bed. “I said, fuck.”

“Okay, smartass, but wh—”

“Kim Minseok’s boyfriend is— _was_ —Luhan.  Which means they broke up and it was probably my fault.”

“Jongin.”

“ _What_? I’m just saying.” Jongin knew he was being petulant; knew he was being pouty, but he’d wanted to be rid of that delicately featured athlete ever since he’d met him.

“Jongin, I’m sure it wasn’t you.” Kyungsoo paused, waiting for a response that didn’t come. Then he said, his tone more cautious, “Is this something we’re going to have to deal with?” And he said _deal with_ with an inflection such to cause Jongin to raise his head from the bed to look at Kyungsoo. And swallow.

“N-no... I mean... I don’t t-think...”

Kyungsoo relaxed against his seat again. “Good. You wanna keep running lines with me?”

And that was that. Jongin filed it away into another compartment, hoping his mind had the capacity for infinite compartments and that their barriers would never break, flooding him with things filed away for never.

Kyungsoo slept in his hotel room that night. He said it was because his bed was more comfortable, but the moment he arrived his head was swivelling, searching the large hotel suite for the two balls of fluff that came barreling toward him.

It also might have been for the sweet wine-kisses after a ridiculously early dinner, when the alcohol had barely buzzed them but made the kisses taste like intoxication squared, soft and strong and wandering about the room as they each tried to press farther into each other and forgot to breathe. Still, Kyungsoo insisted on knowing his lines fully before they officially retired to bed— “the ultimate motivation,” he called it, and so they finally settled down reading lines on the sofa, the dogs reclining at their feet.

A knock came at the door. Jongin frowned; he hadn’t ordered any room service and judging by the slanted sunlight hitting the building across from the window, it wasn’t so late that any noise they made would upset a neighbor. Their nighttime activities, surely, would be more upsetting anyway.

Kyungsoo was in the bathroom, so he rose carefully, so as not to disturb the dogs, and padded over to the door, opening it wide.

In a million years he would not have expected the man lounging on the other side. The man had jet black hair and a pair of designer sunglasses resting on his head, his cheekbones shining with melanin and his mouth quirked into a dimpled resting position just as Jongin remembered. Except he was _older_ , so much older—the same age as Jongin, but in Jongin’s memory, only fifteen. Now he’d grown into his face, and his body, lean muscles rippling beneath the tight shirt he wore under a soft-looking leather jacket.

“ _Lay_?”

“ _Jongin_?” Lay’s expression was just as shocked as Jongin was sure his was, eyes wide as he slowly stood to look at Jongin with his mouth hanging open.

“I...” Jongin sputtered, his hand still on the door.

Lay cleared his throat, blinking as if a man in a waking dream. “I go by Yixing now, actually,” he said, shifting on his feet. “Lay, I believe, was a phase back when... back when...” he licked his lips, staring at Jongin like he was looking a ghost in its fully pigmented face.

Jongin swallowed. “Yixing, then. Yixing.” The name tasted sharp and new on his tongue, distinct from the old familiar _Lay._ “To what do I owe this blast from the past? How the hell have you _been_? The last time I saw you you were driving away in a car with no license plate.”

Yixing smiled wryly. “Eh, not so different, I guess. Can I come in? I actually came to see Kyungsoo, I was told I’d find him here. Imagine my surprise... are you two friends or...”

Jongin felt a pang of confusion—a stumble of hesitation. “Yeah, we’re... friends. Come on in, though. Fill in the gaps.” And he stepped back to allow the man to stalk into the apartment. He moved with a delicate grace that had only just been developing when Jongin had known him. Now, fully developed, it seemed dangerous and beautiful. Yixing didn’t sit but stood, near the couch, his eyes sweeping over the hotel suite quickly but thoroughly.

“I see you got those dogs you wanted.”

“ _That,_ if anything, was certainly going to happen,” Jongin affirmed.

“And you went in to modelling, right? You were always so mad at your mom about that.” Yixing cocked his head, studying Jongin. “Always shouting at us about how you’d never become that.”

Jongin gave a nervous laugh. “Well, I guess I grew up. Stupid shit to waste the gifts you were given, right?”

Yixing snorted. “You sound like your mom.”

Jongin’s stomach twisted. “I hope not. But what about you? I like the jacket.”

Yixing smiled like something was funny. “Thanks. I’m—”

“Yixing!” Kyungsoo’s voice interrupted him and Kyungsoo was sweeping into the room, guiding Yixing away from Jongin and toward the counter.

Jongin’s head whipped toward the door—someone else was loitering there, behind its open shadow, standing almost like a shadow themselves. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat on the couch.

“I completely forgot about the meeting. We should have—you should have come to my trailer.” Kyungsoo was speaking in clipped, frenetic phrases, his eyes unable to settle in the same place for any long period of time.

“That’s okay,” replied Yixing, his voice steady and leonine, “I’m here now. Can we talk?”

“Yeah, of course. Yeah. Hey Jongin, I’m just gonna use the bedroom, okay? Just, uh—hang tight. I won’t be long.” And he and Yixing disappeared into the bedroom. Jongin halfheartedly considered going to the door to eavesdrop, but he didn’t have the motivation to—perhaps he simply trusted Kyungsoo too much. Besides, the shadows waiting at the door would surely see him and report back to Yixing. For some reason, Jongin felt the need to show Yixing that he wasn’t the sort of person who eavesdropped. So he lounged, and waited, and let memory drag him back, to when Yixing was Lay and they were stupider, or maybe just truly innocent.

Kyungsoo hadn’t been lying. It wasn’t long before they emerged again, Kyungsoo looking grim with his jaw set. Yixing looked the same as he had when he’d gone in, now that Jongin looked closer: face arranged into placid neutrality. He didn’t stop to talk to Jongin anymore, though Jongin fair expected it; instead, he gave Jongin a friendly salute as he sailed past him and through the doors, collecting the shadows as he went. Then Jongin lost sight of him as Kyungsoo shut the door firmly behind him and threw the bolt shut.

Leaning his back against the door, Kyungsoo looked across the apartment at Jongin and Jongin realized he looked even paler than usual.

“There’s more to my story,” he breathed into the warm, artificial air.

***

author's note: I feel really bad about how long it took me to get this update out! It's honestly a happier chapter, believe it or not, and I hope you all get done with it not too mad at me? I hope there was some nice fluff after the heaviness last chapter? Let me know what you all think of Jongin's mom, of Zitao, and of Luhan and Minseok! So much!

...psst. I'm a hoe for comments :)

p.s. I really wanted to get this out to you guys, it's midnight, so no, this has not been beta read. My profuse apologies.


	8. Curef**ing

_warnings: graphic sex w slight dom/sub undertones. more psychological fuckery as per usual!_

“Look, I’m clearly not as good at running as you, Jongin!” Kyungsoo leaned far over the hotel room’s balcony like a bird was beating at his ribcage, threatening to carry him up and over, into the bitter Busan air.

Jongin stood quietly in the doorway, his face a mess of shadows, arms crossed over his chest. “I’ll put that on my resume next time, then,” Jongin replied sullenly, “I can _flee_ anything. Hyung, you know that’s not what I was saying.”

“Yes, yes it _is.”_ Kyungsoo still refused to turn and face the younger model. “You’re saying I should have run to the ends of the fucking earth to get away from them once they made me do those things. I don’t know how to make you understand that it was hard to take a fucking step.” He laughed sadly. “ _They_ knew that.”

“Hyung, listen to me. I was just surprised you weren’t more indignant. Offended. Furious. Disposed to retribution and revenge. They _recruited_ you?”

“No, I just...” Kyungsoo gave a shuddering sigh, spitting imaginary feathers into the wind. “I just didn’t defend, I guess. They had reasons. They had video footage of what I did. I’ve never seen it and Yixing never mentions it but they have it. I don’t really want to remember it but can you just trust me? They were convincing. I just pull strings for them every once and awhile. They don’t ask for a whole lot.”

“No.” Jongin’s voice was low and dangerously smooth. “They just slide on into your life when it seems like you might be forgetting them. Or when you get a little too free or your smile gets a little too true. It’s fucking sick.”

Kyungsoo finally turned around to look up at Jongin, swaying backward briefly in surprise at how close Jongin (and the doorway) really was to him. “Why are you angrier about this than I am? It’s not even your business.”

“Like hell it’s my business.” Jongin took a smooth step forward, one of his legs slipping firmly between Kyungsoo’s. "It’s like watching someone stealing into a sculptor’s studio to-to chip away at the artist’s hard day’s work. So there’s never any progress made.” His hand lifted in a wistful motion, like he wanted to run it through Kyungsoo’s hair, or along Kyungsoo’s face. But it hovered in the air beside the actor, and fell again; Jongin had thought of something else.

“But also,” Jongin murmured, “I care because I _knew_ him. I bet I know some of the other guys who work for—wait, and who is _them_?”

Kyungsoo shrugged. “I don’t know. Not in their best interest for me to know. You know.” He smiled a little at his play on words.  

“We used to steal cars together,” Jongin said, and his eyes were glassy and far away, the blue lights from the city glimmering like oceans on moist canvases. “I met him playing soccer in the street before my dad got his fancy job and we moved away. We used to use our dads’ empty beer bottles as goalposts. Then we grew up and we got antsy and—god, we were _beautifully_ stupid. Everything now is so sterile and nothing is unguarded so it can look innocent but that was real, raw innocence. Lay was the best at distracting people. He was always the lookout. He’s a people person.”

“ _Yixing_ is the only one I ever talk to. So I wouldn’t know.” Kyungsoo swallowed, scared to break Jongin out of his memories.

It didn’t do any good. Jongin blinked and his lips parted as he took in a quick breath, realizing where he was. “They’re using your fear,” he blurted, taking a step back, to where the doorway framed his proportions perfectly in a near-silhouette.

“Th-they what?” Kyungsoo licked his lips, his grip on the railing behind him tightening. The chill of the metal reminded him that he wasn’t floating in some dream-space with Jongin.

“You’re scared skinny and straight of them. You’re scared upside down. You can’t hide it when you look at a gun, you couldn’t hide it when you were telling me what happened, and you certainly can’t hide it from someone like Yixing, who reminds you about it with just his presence. All he has to do is look at you sideways and narrow his eyes and you’ll ask how high to jump.”

“That’s—that’s—”

“Hyung, I have demons, but at least I hate them.” Jongin’s eyes were hard to see in the light but Kyungsoo saw his jaw ripple as he clenched and unclenched it.

“You think I don’t hate the people who killed my mother?” He asked quietly, the words tasting acidic in his mouth.

They locked gazes for a moment, and Kyungsoo could tell Jongin was thinking carefully about what to say. Then something frustrated the model and he whirled, stalking back into the hotel room. But he had to know—he couldn’t stand Jongin insinuating something like that and just walking away. He flew back into the warm, a warm shiver sliding over him as the warm air of the indoors enveloped his chilled skin. Jongin was sulking on the bed, eyes settled on the TV as it flipped schizophrenically from channel to channel. “ _You think—”_ he began to ask again.

“Your mother _and_ father,” Jongin corrected quietly, his honey voice rolling like flames across the room. He didn’t turn his eyes from the TV. Kyungsoo’s mouth snapped shut and he stopped in the middle of the room the air leaving his chest all at once.

“Jongin...”

And they were stuck. There was nowhere for them to go, to talk more. But Kyungsoo didn’t want to leave him: there he was, long body laid out over the bed, and he could see his eyelashes from here. Jongin looked up at him when he didn’t say anything else, and Kyungsoo realized how sad he looked. He looked _old_ , old and beautiful, but not innocent. Not naive. He sighed. “You are everything intimidating to me, you know that?”

That prompted a surprised laugh from Jongin, who blinked against wet eyes. “Intimidating, me?” he asked, his voice cracking. It sounded more broken but more honest than it had the first time he’d said it, when they’d first met. Jongin followed Kyungsoo as he moved over to the bed, causing it to dip as he sat on its edge. “I’m not intimidating,” Jongin continued, “Just fucked up enough to scare anyone smart enough to know who to really be scared of.”

***

The first snow fell in a deadly whisper overnight. In the morning, Kyungsoo could taste the vague, metallic tang of salt on his tongue that meant stale tears from last night. Jongin was already gone when he woke up curled into a ball on one side of the bed, and it felt like the snow and the cold had invaded the tenacious central heat to inject a chill deep into his bones.

Their conversation didn’t come back to him right away. He knew it would—things Jongin said had a way of sticking in his mind, even when he thought he was too drunk or not paying attention. The sadder it was, the better he remembered. But now, Kyungsoo let his mind be blank and cold and watched Monggu and Jjanggah as they slept at the foot of the bed, curled around each other for warmth, their bodies rising and falling in quick doggie-breaths.

 _It’s a day for thinking._ Kyungsoo could remember his father’s baritone like the man was  beside him, his potbelly sitting calmly in front of him, enthroned. _The first snow erases everything, Kyungsoo. My whole life I’ve been caught up in something before the first snow._ And then Kyungsoo was hurling backwards into the memory of his childhood home in the east, cold snow stinging the tip of his nose and ears as he tripped over too-big boots, running after the tinkling laugh of his mother. _Their backyard had been so big. Big enough to get him groaning when he had to mow it in the summer. Big enough for a garden,..._

Kyungsoo shivered and poked his toes out from under the covers. A gentle breeze slipped between them and seemed to tug him farther from his mental seclusion, to rise from bed and pad over to the shower, where the water seemed to become warm almost instantly. He didn’t want to let in yet. He wanted to listen to the sound of his breath happily leaving his mouth, of the water hitting his skin and the latex shower curtain and the tub, of the water running behind the walls.

Frustratingly, as his hair soaked to lie flat against his head and his skin became flushed pink with heat, it all began to filter in in disjointed fragments. Stress that crept up his spine and curled around the base of his skull.

_Yixing asking him for something simple this time—just an endorsement, easy for him at this point—but asking for expediency._

_Jongin raising his arms above his head to rest his hands on the door frame, leaning forward to show the toned undersides of his arms as his eyes darkened._

That memory was from a full week ago.

_A sleek, heavy gun trembling in his head, pointed at his father’s head, and his father’s face was red, and contorted and ugly, and all his wrinkles were all mixed up, not like they were when he was happy, and his stomach was heaving and there was spittle on his chin._

Kyungsoo remembered numbly.

The gun felt hot in his hand at work, when they tried to foist it upon him and he dropped it like he was a vampire and it was dipped in holy water. Everyone was tired, though, because they were well into shooting on the plane and Kyungsoo wasn’t changing. Youngjin was developing a habit of quickly shaking his head when something annoyed him and moving swiftly to the next thing.

He fled as soon as they called the last cut. His trailer was not refuge enough. He went to the edge of the city where he could sit up high behind thick glass and flinch until it felt like a dance, like the involuntary blink was choreographed to match the blast of the guns below.

The firing range was busy today, and there was always someone at every target. Between his demented twitching, Kyungsoo decided he was inventing stories for the people shooting their guns there. This girl wanted to defend herself, and she told everyone she was just scared of intruders, but really it was from her brother. That teenage boy had dreams of being a police officer one day and shot with stoic preciseness,

Only when he let his eyes unfocus did he see the reflection in the glass of the form behind him, sitting a few benches behind him. From there he wouldn’t be able to see the shooting range below—only Kyungsoo, and each flinch from each snap of a gun. Kyungsoo could recognize those long legs and that silhouette anywhere.

Jongin was watching him with a concerned intensity, his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. For a few minutes, he didn’t realize Kyungsoo was watching him back, since Kyungsoo was just looking at the glass. And so Kyungsoo permitted himself a candid study of the model, if through the medium of the wavering glass and his flinching. Jongin’s eyebrows were bunched together in a worried furrow, and his thick lips were pressed together as much as they could be.

“Jongin?”

He looked so sad and it slipped out—they were alone in the dim viewing room anyway and no one could see them unless they physically came into the room as well.

Jongin blinked a few times before sitting up. “Hyung. I... I guessed you might be here.”

“That’s a pretty impressive guess.” Kyungsoo turned on his bench, flinching again as a gun went off.

“Not so much. You’re easier to read than you think. And your frustration manifests itself in fucked-up ways. Trust me, I’d know.” Jongin was speaking in the quiet, gentle tones of someone who didn’t want to startle a deer, or let a child know they’re dying. “Kyungsoo, you shouldn’t be here.”

Kyungsoo’s heart squeezed at the sound of his name from Jongin’s lips. Then he flinched; a gun had gone off.

“Kyungsoo, let me take us home. Please.” There was something pleading in Jongin’s voice. Something Kyungsoo didn’t want to let down.

“It was the first snow today,” Kyungsoo said quietly, his voice raspy from disuse.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know what you do for first snow, but... but the day after they died, it snowed.” He swallowed.

“Are you telling me that—”

“Yes.”

“That yesterday was—”

“Sort of. It wasn’t the anniversary. But it was. I don’t know.” Kyungsoo gave a long, shuddering sigh.

“Let me take us home,” Jongin said again, standing to his full height so that Kyungsoo had to tilt his head up, flinching, in order to meet his eyes. The model extended a delicate hand, peeking out from a long wool coat, for Kyungsoo to take.

“What’s home?” Kyungsoo asked.

Jongin pursed his lips and rolled his eyes. “Monggu and Jjanggah, duh,” he said. Kyungsoo laughed, and took his hand.

***

Jongin was quiet the whole way home—not the kind of quiet Kyungsoo was used to, the simple lack of conversation that languished easily between two people comfortable with each other’s company.

No, this silence was more akin to the leonine quietness of that first night. Intent, Jongin was spread across his side of the cab, long legs taking up all the available space, long body displayed in sweeping proportions and following in graceful lines through his arms as they stretched over the seats. On a different day, Kyungsoo might slide over, might straddle him, might kiss his lips that glistened in the sunset glow like he wanted to, might even palm him through his jeans in a tease for when they got home.

He didn’t today. Jongin’s lips shone, yes—but his eyes were hooded in thought and he looked more like a painting than a person, unapproachable and ineffable, his skin a gold that couldn’t be mixed in paint.

He felt Jongin’s heat close behind him as they climbed the steps to the hotel, and as they leaned next to each other against the wall in the elevator. It was like watching a lion’s muscles slowly bunching, engaging for the pounce and attack. Kyungsoo skittishly remembered that they hadn’t left each other on the rosiest of terms this morning.

He was closely followed down the hallway, too, and when he stopped in front of Jongin’s door, the model simply wrapped his arm around Kyungsoo to insert his passkey into the door and unlock it.

The moment Kyungsoo was inside Jongin was there, filling up his space—the dogs didn’t get a chance. The closing of the door was a distant echo as Jongin pressed up against him and pressed their lips together in a searing, purposeful kiss. Kyungsoo sank farther back against the wall as Jongin pressed closer, forcing Kyungsoo’s mouth open, drawing hotness from his mouth and sliding their tongues together.

When he pulled away Jongin’s lips were swollen and his breath was hot as he pressed Kyungsoo’s shoulders against the wall. “Let’s watch a movie, Hyung,” he said, his voice rasping in his throat.

Kyungsoo swayed forward. “J-Jongin-ah, I don’t think... let’s... let’s do something else...” for he was seduced; he was perpetually seduced, and Jongin had merely to tease it out of him to bring the seduction to life.

This was when he should have smirked. Instead, Jongin clenched his jaw and took a few stumbling steps away from Kyungsoo, into the room, sweeping his shirt off and flipping the television on so the glowing lights reflected off his skin. Kyungsoo followed him tentatively into the room as he stood before the TV, intently flipping channels until he found what he was looking for and threw the remote somewhere across the room.

Kyungsoo flinched.

“Come on. Come here, Kyungsoo. Come here, hyung.” Jongin’s voice was low, steady, familiar under the sound of the movie like a green beacon of light, guiding him forward into the circle of his arms. He was wound up, tired but humming with energy, and each time he let his fingertips brush across Jongin’s chest he felt the energy get tighter and more concentrated. He felt his eyebrows knit together.

“Jongin—I—” _flinch._ “This movie—”

Jongin didn’t care. His mouth pushed its way onto his and swallowed the rest of his sentence, and Kyungsoo, frustrated, opened his mouth and relented. His chest rose like a marionette’s toward Jongin, his head tilting back, their bodies arching together in front of the flickering, ricocheting television in silhouetted relief.

Jongin was even more intent than he’d been the first time they’d met, and Kyungsoo had told him _I’d like you to fuck me, Jongin._ His hand slipped under the waistband of Kyungsoo’s pants and kneaded his ass. His intention was clear. Kyungsoo could feel it through the front of Jongin’s jeans, rigid against his own growing erection.

Words melted hotly against Jongin’s wet lips. “Jongin...” His body was vibrating in the model’s arms, trying to flinch as a firefight started up, and deep-throated shouting, and machine-gun fire, but Jongin man-handed him onto the couch, onto his back, so that the model’s knee was in between Kyungsoo’s legs, and he took off Kyungsoo’s shirt, and left off his mouth for Kyungsoo’s nipples, and Kyungsoo was rendered incapable of speech because he was overwhelmed and he slipped quickly under.

He dragged Kyungsoo’s underwear down with his jeans as an argument settled down and Kyungsoo began to tune out the television—tried to catch his breath. Jongin’s mouth was around the tip of his cock now, wet and sucking as he took a lubed finger to his hole. Kyungsoo pressed his leg, which was hitched onto Jongin’s shoulder, down as he arched upward, filling Jongin’s mouth as a moan evaporated into the air, louder than the blood pounding in his ears and certainly louder than the movie.

Jongin worked quickly and stayed far from what he knew would get Kyungsoo off. So many questions. Always so many questions and he never had time to ask them and when he had time he never wanted to, not when Jongin could do _this_ , but _why_ was he doing this. Jongin looked up at him with hooded, leonine eyes, and in one moment Kyungsoo felt as if he knew him completely, like they were the same person, and in the next, he was a veil, he was insubstantial and smoky, he was the shade he described himself as, impossible to understand or even look at directly. Kyungsoo screwed his eyes shut as a bang sounded and Jongin’s tongue flicked against the underside of his cock. Three fingers now. Jongin had to pop off for a moment just to breathe heavily.

But he didn’t fuck Kyungsoo right away. Kyungsoo was digging his nails into his shoulders, he was marring his skin—but Jongin just growled in the back of his throat and pulled his hands away, sitting up to push damp hair away from his forehead, his chest and cheekbones glistening in the low light. He pulled off his own bottoms. But he only lubed himself up and rolled on a condom, watching Kyungsoo. Teasing, three fingers in quickly then out. He hadn’t touched Kyunsgoo’s prostate and Kyungsoo couldn’t remember the last time he’d whined but he let out a huff and he felt really close. There was music on the movie that sounded like something was building. He tried catching Jongin’s waist with his legs. Jongin caught them and held them apart so that Kyungsoo’s hole just clenched in want and they breathed, and waited, and Kyungsoo wasn’t understanding enough to know what they were waiting for.

 _Flinch_. The movie exploded and a shiver-shimmy rolled through Kyungsoo’s body in a cold flash that made his teeth clack together. But Jongin was on him the moment it started, his weight hovering on top of him, his heat replacing the heat that fled Kyungsoo’s body as it rejected everything, and he slipped his three fingers in once more, brushing Kyungsoo’s prostate just briefly, and Kyungsoo cried out as Jongin fluidly replaced them with his cock, easily taking it in but at the same time totally unprepared, his mind whirling and fragmenting as Jongin pistoned in and out of him as he adjusted. He didn’t have time to put it back together.

He kept vibrating as the finally of the movie continued, but Jongin was _more_ , Jongin was overpowering. His cock hit him the right way every time and when Kyungsoo could bring himself to open his eyes he was met with Jongin’s hooded eyes and intense features inches away from his. He had to close them again because theophanies* were for the pious. And Jongin was too close and he couldn’t turn his back, not while Jongin was _in_ him and all over him and he wasn’t reacting anymore to what was happening in the movie. He was trying to breathe with Jongin as he fucked him.

Jongin must have sensed the tide turning, because he became more enthusiastic, pulling his face away and flipping Kyungsoo over so that the world became the soft fabric of the couch against his cheek, and his ass was hoisted up in the cool air, and slapped once when he jerked at something he heard on the TV, as if to say, _pay attention here._

And then his arms were drawn back—Jongin was pulling back on his hands and truly fucking him in earnest as the movie came to a crescendo and Kyungsoo heard himself making noises but he didn’t know what they were. He tasted salt. He felt the tip of his cock brush the couch teasingly every time Jongin pounded his prostate and sent him closer to the edge. Somehow, Jongin kept going—kept both of them going, with the occasional slap on the ass, kneading it occasionally, hands sliding up and down his sides in hot trails of skin on skin as skin slapped against skin in tune with the TV.

Then it died down, and Jongin sheathed himself in Kyungsoo, and wrapped his hand around Kyungsoo’s cock, and Kyungsoo convulsed in white ropes onto his stomach and Jongin’s hand, his voice worn out, little moans escaping his mouth and limping away into the denouement  of the movie.

Slowly, he began to hear Jongin’s breath above him, heavy but familiar, and to feel his own body, and the soft couch beneath him. He winced as Jongin pulled out and tied the condom, but not much more, sitting languidly on the couch with one arm thrown across the back, licking his lips and running his hand through his hair. He appeared to be watching the movie. Kyungsoo, turning over to lie on his back, stared at him, open-mouthed.

Jongin slid his eyes over to him. “What?” He asked, finally, after an uncomfortable period of staring,

Kyungsoo didn’t avert his eyes. “What do you _mean, what_? What the _fuck_ was that?” Kyungsoo didn’t feel like asking any of those other questions that had shot through him like hot flashes of lightning at some point in the beginning. He wasn’t even sure if he remembered them. In any case, it was hard to focus when Jongin was sitting naked on his couch, acting like nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

Jongin shrugged. “Well, you sort of did it for me, although I’m not sure your realized it. I mean, let’s not get into me. I just... f-fucked it out of you, or tried to. The fear. Of the guns, at least. I hope.” He swallowed, his adam’s apple glimmering in the light of the movie.

Kyungsoo sat up a little and tried not to focus so much on Jongin. He cast a line into himself, probing to see if anything felt different. He felt... fucked out. Tired, like he’d just cum hard and needed a nap or maybe something to eat. But did he feel...

Maybe better to focus on Jongin. Kyungsoo scooted forward and pressed a kiss to Jongin’s shoulder, surprising him: Jongin’s eyes flew wide and Kyungsoo had to laugh at how open and innocent his face looked like this, surprised and baffled.

“You’re hot,” he muttered. “Any way I get you, I swear.”

Jongin cracked a sheepish smirk. “Hyung...”

Kyungsoo raised his eyebrows.

“I know.”

***

The set was still relatively void of sunlight, and when Kyungsoo arrived the next day, disheveled and still wearing yesterday’s clothes, he realized a sickly pallor to the crew that hadn’t been there when they’d been shooting in the airport. Today he didn’t try to avoid the deflation he caused when he walked on set. Youngjin, in his director’s chair, passed his hand over his face as his eyes skipped across Kyungsoo’s appearance.

Then the director sat up as Kyungsoo approached him instead of heading for his trailer or hair and makeup or costuming or any of the other places he’d probably be better suited for. “Kyungsoo, you look...” he trailed off. “...tired.”

Kyungsoo shrugged. “I’m getting in character, you know? The movie takes place over what, twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? Sleep is for the weak. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Youngjin cocked a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “No?”

“Let’s do try that action sequence today. The one at the front of the plane. That you tried to get me to do on Monday.”

Youngjin’s eyebrows rose higher. “Really?” He looked around, like he was trying to make sure no one could hear them, like they were speaking in foolish, drunken asides that they’d forget soon enough, like they’d need to be erased from his memory anyway.

“Did I stutter?”

An hour later he was crouching behind an airplane seat half off its screws, his torn, expertly wrinkled suit beginning to show true signs of his perspiration in the heat of the plane. They’d called in Gunho to watch from the side and Youngjin looked uncharacteristically nervous. His costars, at this point, had fallen into the rhythm of professionalism, and watched him with wide-eyed expectancy.

And there was a gun, large, black, lying ominously a foot or so from his reach, in the aisle. Youngjin crouched next to him and Kyungsoo was hit with a wave of expensive cologne. “Okay. You’re going to grab the gun on action, right? You’re going to be ducking opposing fire. Then you’re going to peep above this seat right here—” he demonstrated, so that just his head and his hands lifted above the seat, so he could sight his shot— “and you shoot four blanks. Then we’ll call a cut and see where we are.” He seemed more than skeptical. He seemed sure that they would not reach that point. Kyungsoo could feel the sweat trickle down the dip of his spine down his back; it was hot, and he wondered if it would be unprofessional to ask Younjin what kind of deodorant he used.

Then they were calling action and blanks exploded into the air, vibrating excitedly inside his eardrums. Kyungsoo blinked, moving in dreamlike sluggishness out from his alcove to stare down the aisle.

“Bam! You’re dead. Cut!” Youngjin was there in front of him, his smooth forehead bunching together in concern. “It’s fine. We’ll do it again—now you know what it’s like. I’ll give you a minute.” And he was gone, getting everyone set up again.

Kyungsoo sat back against the wall behind him that was meant to be the separation between the main cabin and the flight attendants’ cabin. Let his mind wander to the big black gun, the first one he’d ever seen, in his father’s bedside table. Next to his toy firetruck, when it got taken away from him because he was playing with it in the middle of the night, its fabricated siren screeching through the silent house and making his father’s dark circles like dark portents of the next day’s grouchiness.

Kyungsoo’s eyes were wandering over the set, skipping over familiar shapes and people without seeing them until they wandered upwards, to the catwalks where shades operated the lights. Seasoned actors fled to the catwalks only when they really didn’t want to be found; they had the sanctity of secrecy, of being a place ordained by those of this trade.

He blinked.

That was a silhouette he was intimately familiar with. A model’s silhouette, not an actor’s—and he could just see the glint of Jongin’s eyes from here, or perhaps it was a trick in his mind. Either way, he felt his cheeks and the tips of his ears get warm but his spine went cold in a shiver, and his languid remembrances faded back into the pool from which they had come.

“Action!” He grabbed the gun and he acted it, too; he’d dreamed of this as a little boy, of the commerciality, of being the face of the close-up as he withstood the onslaught of bullets and then sent forth his own righteous volley, his teeth clenched together, arms raised straight across the cheap faux leather seat. There was a short silence, a stunned pause filled only with the buzzing of the equipment and the lights and his own breathing, and then everyone realized what had happened and Youngjin yelled “Cut!” and Kyungsoo let the gun slide from his hands.

It had felt natural to hold it; that had never been his problem. But now, perhaps, his problems had receded into a grim year or two, and a hit show that propelled him to stardom at the same time.

Kyungsoo sat back against the wall again. He was tired but it was only the beginning of the day. Maybe he’d ask for a coffee—surely they’d reward him with that. Here came footsteps. “I didn’t think you’d actually—” he started, a smile in his voice, then looked up. “Oh, sorry. I thought you were someone else, sir.”

“Quite alright,” Gunho replied, smiling good-naturedly. “You must know I have complete faith in you and I always have, ever since we discovered you. There’s really something of a fighter in you. I told everyone, I said, you can’t give up on Do Kyungsoo. He’s a professional.”

Kyungsoo smiled tightly. He could see Jongin approaching now in the corner of his eye and Gunho’s voice was much too old and rough for what he wanted. Thankfully, Gunho seemed to be finished saying his piece and was meandering back to his corner of the set with his aides, and Kyungsoo was free to stand and smile as hard as he could at Jongin, wishing he could hug him, kiss him, envelop him. But Jongin was his “guest” and his “friend”, so they just grinned at each other and Kyungsoo mostly grinned at the dimple in Jongin’s cheek that he promised himself he’d kiss for at least ten minutes that night.

Jongin didn’t seem to want to say anything out loud. Instead, he mouthed, “Jal haesseo, jagi**,” his lips said. _Good work, babe._ Kyungsoo’s face hurt from smiling and he kicked at Jongin’s thighs in an attempt to get the man away from him.

“If you don’t leave me alone I won’t get any work done,” he confessed.

Jongin strode away with his shoulders back and Kyungsoo didn’t care who was watching—he watched the model saunter all the way out the door, until he wasn’t visible anymore.

***

Jongin was tired of having powder up his nose. Not cocaine, or anything fun, but face powder, the kind the makeup artists liked to brush all over the models just before they were sent out to walk like it had some anointing quality that could make the models walk taller and glow brighter.

Even from the front row of this show, the powder drifted down in thin, grainy layers, passing transiently through the spotlights on the long raised black runway. Jongin sighed. He was ambivalent about this part of his job—on the one hand, he rarely got to sit back and watch a show in its completion, with the chaos backstage hidden by imposing walls that faded from white at the top to black at the bottom, like pure milk had been spilled and then smudged. On the other hand, it was a networking stint: if he showed interest in the brand, if he was seen publicly appreciating the cut of the jackets and the angle of the skirts, he’d be hired for the next show. Then if he walked well in it, he might be placed at the front of the show the next time.

On the _other_ hand—Jongin was running out of hands as the clink of champagne glasses rustled around him in prelude to the show—it was good to be getting his work the traditional way, without workarounds or shortcuts. When he walked at the front of a show, it was because he had earned it.

Jongin let his mind wander as he lounged in his seat, waiting for the show to start. Most of the guests were seated by now—next to him sat a cute little blogger he was pretty sure he’d slept with when her career was getting started, and on the other side a severe-looking man, a reporter, with an ipad-keyboard contraption already set up. He let his mind wander to the way Kyungsoo’s face had changed after action had been called, like an instinct, and—well, it wasn’t so dramatic as _he wasn’t Kyungsoo anymore_ , but he lost some of the mannerisms Jongin was most used to about the compact actor and for an excited moment there had been a tingling rush of anger from him, of rawness unconcealed, and then they’d called cut and it had drifted away, erased like it had never existed.

It took Jongin’s breath away.

There went the lights and here came the music. Jongin settled deeper into his folding chair and tilted his head, waiting for the first model. He knew this guy, Taehwan, because he’d come up like Jongin had. He was pale and tall and canine like Jongin was tan and tall and feline. The rest followed him and Jongin was sinking into a trance of monochrome streetwear until something startled him to attention.

A dip in the customary high line of tall heads. Someone much shorter than expected—dressed smartly, to accentuate his thighs with tight black skinny jeans, the knees ripped enough to see the contours of his kneecaps. Tight white shirt with some artist’s variation on minimalist plaid. His face shown with the powder, too, and his hair (all of it) had been swept up to reveal Kyungsoo’s subtle undercut. Tasteful eyeliner brought unusual intensity to his eyes.

Jongin watched him in frozen shock. His eyes followed the actor all the way down the runway, and his thoughts were frozen, and then as Kyungsoo fluidly stopped at the end, and turned like he’d been doing it for years.

Then he’d disappeared behind the wall and Jongin’s chest felt constricted. Where a few minutes ago everything had been ordered, where it was supposed to be, now everything was mixed up and the cute blogger looked over at him, concerned, and he licked his lips and tried to look as nonchalant as before. But he’d lost it, and for the rest of the show he was bouncing his foot, nervous to get up, for the light and the dark and the white to be over and the warm yellow lights to come on again and set everything into comforting, regular relief.

No, this feeling was not dissipating like Kyungsoo’s fierceness had on set. He hated this with his whole being, this mixed-up-ness. He could practically hear his mom railing at him from an upstairs apartment, where the kids playing outside couldn’t hear her. You’re spending all your time cavorting with those thugs. You’re going to end up dead in a gutter somewhere if you stick with them. You probably have diseases already. I’ll make Hyejin the model instead.

Hyejin was a doctor now and had a husband up north of Seoul and she visited their mother even less than Jongin did. And Kyungsoo was supposed to be an actor and Jongin was stuck being a model. He rose swiftly from his seat the moment the lights went up, startling the man beside him so that his ipad almost fell from his lap. He muttered a few farewells to the blogger and then he was striding backstage, smiling prettily at the girl standing next to the entrance and name-dropping the designer’s top assistant to the real guard to get through.

Kyungsoo was removing his makeup and Jongin was struck dizzy by the role reversal, swaying for a second and clenching his jaw to get his senses back. But he approached the actor, gracefully sidestepping hellos and recognitions as he went, and leaned in close. He was not here to spill his guts. He was done with that; Kyungsoo knew so much already. “What in fuck’s name are you doing here?” He whispered under his breath, when Kyungsoo smiled up at him in recognition.

Kyungsoo’s smile faltered and his lower lip stuttered. “Well—I just—I thought it might be a nice, you know, sort of thank you, for everything, at the set I mean, and, you know, off. Because I know you’re shooting for this show next season so I told them I was a friend of yours. That you recommended this show to me.”

Jongin rolled his tongue around in his mouth. “Really? And what made you think that was a fucking good idea? That I can’t handle my business on my own?” He was trying to keep his voice down.

Kyungsoo looked unsure, his smile gone now. Jongin could see tiny beads of sweat at his hairline, where the makeup blended with the beginning of his hairline. “Jongin...”

“No, I’m not _like_ you, Kyungsoo.” Jongin barreled on. “I don’t need help with my professional life. It’s the one thing—” people were looking at them and he leaned in closer, his voice becoming a harsh half-whisper— “It’s the _one_ thing I have under control, Kyungsoo. How does it seem fair to you to take that away from me?”

“It’s just one show Jongin, I was just engaging...”

“I don’t need you to engage!” He couldn’t breathe like he normally could, and now things were picking up steam and Jongin felt like he couldn’t turn himself back towards reason. “I don’t need you to hold my fucking hand, Kyungsoo, my issues aren’t _fragile,_ they’re fucking _monsters_! I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this.” He whirled and stalked out before Kyungsoo could reply, his legs carrying him out and then farther out, into the city. The cicadas were long dead by now, and he buttoned up his coat as a light snow began to fall, closing his eyes and walking as far as he could—it was a habit now. This was regular and it was a practice.

He walked until he found what he was looking for and his feet hurt in their designer loafers. They tingled a bit with cold, but that was okay: he stood before a small stained-glass window, dimly glowing, and a heavy oak door. But he could still hear the sermon booming from inside, muffled slightly so that he had to concentrate hard to hear what was being said. He took the two or three steps up to the door and leaned his back against it, tipping his head against the rough grains, watching his breath fog from his mouth like a soul departing.

“ _Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine._ ”***

Jongin screwed his eyes shut. This was not what he wanted. He didn’t want Kyungsoo’s image before him, lit only by the moonlight filtering through the hotel room window, alabaster skin smooth and rippling, warm hands sliding around his waist. Lips red and shining.

“ _My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi._ ”

The chill had entered his lungs, and each breath he drew was sharp and bright like the pool of light around him that was lit by a single streetlight.

“Jongin?”

He screwed his eyes shut; now he was imagining the smoky voice, gentle, caressing, warm in the cold...

“Jongin, are you okay?”

Jongin opened his eyes and tilted his head. Through the curtain of falling snow emerged Kyungsoo, bundled into a giant black coat, his eyes makeupless, wide, and concerned. The tip of his nose shone red.

Jongin felt tears freeze in the corners of his eyes. He tried to open his mouth, felt something pushing fuzzily in the front of his mind, _say something._

“How did you find me?”

\---

*a theophany is _“_ _a visible manifestation to humankind of God or a god”_

**this is specifically a reference for all you kaisoo stans out there.

***this is scripture from the Song of Solomon v 1

\---

author's note: this chapter is a little shorter than the previous monster chapters, but I hope its contents make up for it! For all you wondering how Jongin got to be how he is, I'm cruel--I'm making you wait one more chapter (to some extent). As always **let me know what you think**!


	9. Names

_warning(s): allusion to suicide, fluffiness_

[spotify playlist (to be played in order)](https://open.spotify.com/user/88seahorse88/playlist/0CnQ515uyXljUNMI076X0L)

Kyungsoo gave a sardonic smile. “Your monsters are predictable,” he said. “You came here last time you ran away. We seem to be pretty good at finding one another.”

Jongin stared at him, his mind recalling those quiet times when his mother had smiled, had decided to tell him stories of spirits that walked with mortals when the moon was full. He licked his lips and found them cracked with cold. “P-pre...” an aspiration escaped his lips, the beginning of a word.

Kyungsoo’s brows drew together and he lowered himself to sit on the cold concrete beside where Jongin now sat. Up close, Jongin couldn’t ignore the stubborn vitality of him, the flush of his cheeks against the prick of the cold, the red of his nose, the shine of his eyes. The puff of breath purer than smoke. “Predictable, yes,” he said—as if somehow, he’d known what Jongin had been about to say. “Your infamous monsters, at least. I’ll keep my theories about _those_ for a night when we’re warm under the covers.” He looked down at his clasped hands. “It’s everything else that’s unpredictable. I don’t know where you’re going to kiss next, much less what you expect of _me_.” His voice wrapped around them like crisp wrapping paper, clear in contrast with the muffled sermon inside.

_The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills._

Jongin felt a burning in his throat that scraped viscerally against the chill around him. It was tears, welling up to his eyes, for once uncontrollable, slipping warmly down his cheeks. “How do you c-continue to love me so insistently?” he asked, his voice wobbling but firm in its incredulous perserverance.

_My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away._

“You’re not as broken as you think,” Kyungsoo told him gently. “And you throw your beauty away like it’s not an indication of your innocence. I don’t mean your face, I mean... well, why don’t we go inside.”

Jongin looked up from where his toe had been making small circles in the snow that melted to slush on the landing. “Inside?” He sniffed.

“Oh, Jonginnie. They’re singing our song. I can stand this stuff, in fact.” Kyungsoo smiled, turning to fully face Jongin. Then he stood fluidly and offered the other boy his hand. It was cold and rough but unmistakably human. Jongin let the actor bear the brunt of his weight as he rose.

The door creaked as Kyungsoo opened it, warmth rushing toward them like a forgotten mother, and light, too. Words washed over them in a wave as the wood fell closed behind them and they slipped onto the bench at the back.

_My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies._

_Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether._

They stayed like that for a while, until Jongin became numbly aware they their hands were still clasped as they listened. That the sermon had turned to a separate subject and he wasn’t really listening anymore. He’d calmed down, probably because Kyungsoo was next to him. Enough to remember drunken nights with Lay: the exhilarating rumble of cars undeserved as they shot through the black tunnel of night.

“Let’s go home.” An intimate whisper in Kyungsoo’s ear. When the actor turned to him, a whiff of his cologne rolled over Jongin and yet more muscles relaxed.

“Home?” Kyungsoo repeated. “I’m _that_. _We_ live in a fucking hotel. Unless you want to go to my small-ass trailer.”

Jongin found himself giggling. “And to think we’re supposed to be successful people, supremely put together.”

“Well—you seem to have mastered skincare.”

***

“Am I going to get any Jongin time anytime soon, or is it all the dogs?” Kyungsoo sat glowering at the dogs spread happily across Jongin’s lap on the couch.

Jongin smiled, his dimple showing. “I’d tell you to fight for it, but that would be unfair. They’ll get hungry eventually. Use your superior human intelligence.”

Kyungsoo slumped in the couch, staring up at the ceiling. It had been so long since he’d spent the morning in his sweatpants. Since his manager had allowed him a time of peace. “That would require getting up and going to put food in their bowls.”

“I’ve never known you to be lazier than me.”

“I’ve been working!” Kyungsoo’s voice came out in a high squeak. “I’m in assassin-training! It’s harder than dancing.”

“Working,” Jongin muttered, his hand idly scratching Monggu’s ruff, “more like working _out._ ” They laughed at themselves for a moment. Then Jongin swallowed, that contented sort of swallow that indicated stories to come. “Lay used to call it that,” he said. “Assassin training. Or it might’ve been assassin practice, I don’t remember. I don’t think we ever intended to hurt anybody, really, but we were very proud of the fact that we could jump over walls and... I don’t know, do flips. He used to say it looked like I’d break in half when I did them because I was so skinny.”

“I doubt he has much need for flipping now,” Kyungsoo offered. “He just tells people what to do.”

“Nah.’ Jongin scoffed. His hair had its morning softness Kyungsoo always regretted leaving, and the light from the hotel suite’s windows flitted mildly across his skin. “You can tell when people are in shape or not. Not like you are, I mean... I don’t know what I mean. Maybe he just goes to the gym, what do I know.” Jongin shrugged.

“You’re awfully interested in him,” Kyungsoo commented neutrally.

There was an awkward beat, long enough for Jongin to think, _he’s right,_ and then he grinned. “Jealous?”

Kyungsoo rolled his eyes. “I’m more jealous of the dogs. I would never wish his life on myself. What little I know of it.”

This produced a frown Kyungsoo hadn’t intended, and he backtracked. “It’s just, I took today off just to be with you and they monopolize you! I definitely think Gunho knew what I was doing, too—he kept asking Youngjin who you were.”

“Gunho?”

“The producer.”

“Oh. What do you mean he knew what you were doing? You’re taking the day off, what other intentions could you possibly have?” Jongin batted his eyelashes coyly, his mouth twitching in a smile.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Kyungsoo’s eyes danced. “I thought I might chaperone a day between you and the dogs. They’ve been complaining to me recently, you know. You don’t give them enough attention.”

Jongin looked at Jjangah in consternation. “Do you really? My betrayer in fluffy disguise?”

Kyungsoo’s eyes crinkled at the corners. Jongin’s stomach rumbled into the clear morning. Kyungsoo felt his stomach contract in response. “We haven’t eaten yet,” he said, surprised.

“One of us hasn’t.” Jongin switched personas for half a second and shot Kyungsoo a devilish stare that shot straight to his groin and called up memories of the two waking up together after a dreamless night.

“Well. _That’s_ a reason to get up. Maybe I’ll feed the kids by and by.” Kyungsoo heaved himself from the couch and padded over to the kitchenette—really a kitchen, since it had two stovetops and all the amenities the actor needed. He felt Jongin’s eyes following his ass as he came to the fridge and hunted for what he needed.

Jongin watched the actor moving comfortably around the kitchenette with quiet eyes, gripped with a sudden fear. No—it wasn’t quite a fear, that was simply the emotion he was used to when it came to tears and things that tugged the heart. This was something closer to awe. Yes, Jongin wondered at the way he watched a scene this mundane with such close attention—the way he reacted to each little motion unique to this man when he trained his focus enough. He could feel his love physically, like a palpable thing he could interact with, as Kyungsoo cracked eggs. It focused like an echo on a jumping muscle in the actor’s forearm, in the way he pressed his lips together to hum something softly under his breath, in the sturdy way in which he moved, like he was feeling the floor with the whole of his foot.

When Kyungsoo looked back at Jongin, the boy was sitting sideways on the couch, which faced away from the kitchen, and his hands had stilled on Jjangah, clutching at the amiably panting dog’s collar unconsciously. His eyes sparkled with what might have been dust or tears.

“You did want eggs, right? I didn’t miss something along the way and you’re deathly allergic?” Kyungsoo asked, holding the spatula aloft in his hand.

Jongin’s chin hitched up and he shook his head fiercely, his hair flying in a sunlit brunette halo around him.

“Kyungsoo...” Kyungsoo turned again, and Jongin was hugging his dog tight, his chin resting on the animal’s back. He felt an intrinsic pull when the model said his name like that. Like his name was too pretty, now, for it to be his own.

“Yes?”

Jongin licked his lips. “Make extra. Protein is good for you and eggs are one thing I can eat lots of.” He was chirping, his lips pouting as he spoke, and Kyungsoo turned around to keep cooking reluctantly.

Jongin finally abandoned the dogs for some food, and he ate more that morning than he could remember eating in one meal in the past year. It didn’t make him feel lazy or heavy like he thought it would. It made him feel strong. And afterwards they watched cartoons with apt attention until Jongin stretched long and declared he needed to work out or else he’d wake up in a bad mood the next morning.

Kyungsoo suggested there were ways around a bad morning mood, but Jongin was disciplined. The model was quick to dress for the gym and was halfway out the door when he hesitated. Kyungsoo read the hesitation correctly and stepped back; Jongin had something to ask of him before he left. “Yes?”

“Hyung... you know how we were talking about Yixing? Before?”

A shadow fell across Kyungsoo’s face and he nodded.

“Do you—I don’t ever want to lie to you, hyung. It’s just we used to be so close.” Jongin was speaking in a small voice, barely audible, like he expected a whiplash of words in response.

“I want you to be happy,” Kyungsoo intoned, uncomfortably aware that he sounded like some cheesy drama currently playing on someone’s TV set a couple of floors down. “But I don’t want to know about it. Does that make sense, Jongin? That I want to keep you and _it_ separate?”

Jongin nodded, his hair flopping almost into his eyes. Then, “You don’t want to know at all?”

Kyungsoo sighed. “I trust your discretion.” It was as blind a declaration as _I love you_ —perhaps more.

***

When the knock came at the door, Kyungsoo let out an exasperated sigh. Why was Jongin knocking—did the dolt lose his keycard again? He didn’t bother looking through the peephole and threw the door open, stopping short when he saw that the person standing outside his door was most decidedly _not_ his model.

It took him a moment to place this woman in his memory. Vaguely, he remembered her at the top of a few steps, conferring with Jongin, and an angry Jongin that took a road trip to calm down. He swallowed. _How had she tracked her son here? And why?_ But he was an actor; he licked his lips and smiled, standing straight up as if he were not still clad in his pajamas. At least he was wearing a shirt.

“Ms. Kim.” He greeted her. She was staring at him openly, her body still and her eyes wide.

Finally, she found her voice. It was abrupt but not harsh—a hurried, less fluid version of her son’s lilt. “I was looking for my son. Kim Jongin, the model. Do I have the wrong room?”

“Not at all, m’am. Do Kyungsoo, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Kyungsoo bowed. “I apologize for opening the door so quickly, I thought you were Jongin himself. I’m using his couch for a day or two while we film down at the studio.”

He watched her digest the information he’d just given her, directly and subliminally, cautiously. She seemed to settle on a pleased demeanor. “An actor! I’ve heard of you! You’re doing some action movie, no?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re... friends... with my son?” She seemed to be trying to look past Kyungsoo into the suite. He let her believe she was being clandestine—they had nothing in _that_ room to hide. Kyungsoo went over the room in his mind. Jongin liked to shove little bottles of lube into cushions, but as long as she didn’t go searching for lost keys in the bottom of couches, all appeared normal.

“I am. We met... at a function some time ago. I don’t currently have a place to stay, he’s very gracious. You’re probably wondering where he is. Please, come in. I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting guests.” Kyungsoo felt himself slipping into acting. He made his face appear flushed in embarrassment at the state of disarray the room was in.

“Thank you.” She moved past him into the room, setting her purse down on a table by the door. She wore a simple black sweater, slacks, and shirt. “I _was_ wondering where he was. He certainly trusts you if he’s leaving you alone.” A slight dip in the corner of her mouth. She disapproved still.

Kyungsoo removed some pillows and fussed at the couch to make a place for her to sit. “He’s working out right now—you know models. In a word, he’s working. I let him stay in my apartment some time ago so he’s repaying me, in a way. I would never intrude on his privacy. I’m very grateful—he’s generous but very focused.” Kyungsoo curtailed his praise there lest it seem too much. Telling her about Jongin’s stay in his apartment was a gamble, since she might see irresponsibility on Jongin’s part, but Kyungsoo was hoping it would more to clear his own credibility.

He let out an inward breath when she nodded like this all made sense. “It’s good of him to repay his debts, especially to an A-lister like yourself,” she agreed. “I think I’ll stay here until he returns, if you don’t mind?” It was not a question, nor even a request; she would stay. “He won’t be long, will he?”

“No.” Kyungsoo clenched his jaw. “He shouldn’t be.” He got her some tea and, thus situated, he quickly changed into more suitable attire. Then he steeled himself for small talk and joined her on the couch. She was from Gangnam; had lived there her whole life. _Ah. Jongin’s tendency toward travel was alien to her._ He did not probe too far. He’d taken enough hints from Jongin to know that this woman was not innocent in his upbringing.

Finally heard footsteps faintly down the hall and then the door burst open along with sound: “—ntervals, apparently I don’t have to go for as long ja—Kyungsoo hyung.” Jongin tripped over his words as he saw the small woman sitting on his couch.

“Mom?” She turned from her place to look at him. Sweat made his hair cling to his forehead still and his sweatpants hung low on his hips, his coat thrown carelessly over a t-shirt showing hints of sweat.

“Jongin-ah! There you are, I was just getting to know your actor friend.” She smiled.

Jongin turned to make eye contact with Kyungsoo. There was genuine fear in that gaze—fear because in the same gaze she surely saw what they couldn’t hide, even if she couldn’t prove it. He asked with his eyes what had happened. Kyungsoo shrugged helplessly and sent encouragement radiating toward the model. “Y-e-es,” Jongin replied, taking a few more steps into the room and closing the door behind himself, dropping his gym bag and shrugging off his coat. “To what do I owe this honor?”

Ms. Kim shrugged, rising. “It’s been so long since you really visited us, Jongin. Your father can’t really travel anymore. I wanted to know if you’d be around Easter-time. It would give me long enough to prepare something nice.”

 _Liar!_ Kyungsoo thought. _You’re spying on your son. Your_ grown _son. And now you have succeeded—for I can act as much as I want, but we are clearly in love._

“Easter-time...” Jongin repeated, running a hand through his hair and crossing to the kitchenette to get himself a glass of water. “Sorry Mom, I’d say hi but I smell and I’m sweaty. Easter-time... I can try. It’s often a busy time for fashion.”

“So long as you aren’t out of the country, you’ll make it up to Gangnam, to your old mother and father?” Her question seemed harmless, but the way she pitched, it was a chastisement, a command. It made Kyungsoo’s skin crawl to be present during the exchange.

Jongin bore it with admirable fortitude. “Of course, mother. So long as I’m in the country.”

“Well!” Ms. Kim looked smug, like she’d come for vegetables and gotten candy. “I guess that concludes _that._ ” She began to make her way toward the door, putting on her thick coat gracefully. _The same grace as Jongin,_ Kyungsoo realized wryly.

Then she did a curious thing: she stopped at the door and turned to her son, who’d followed her there. “I haven’t seen you in the magazines so much lately,” she said, taking on the tone of an agent. “Or in the papers. Remember how they used to profile you?”

“I’m established now, Ma. They don’t need to. Everyone knows who I am now.”

Jongin’s words didn’t dispel the disapproving frown from her lightly lined face. She left with that frown on her face; all the same, the two sagged in relief when she was on the other side of a door. As Kyungsoo watched, Jongin leaned his back heavily on the door, tipping his head upward like he was working to keep tears in his eyes. He waited with bated breath.

Jongin suddenly jerked, slamming his fist into the door and letting out a grunt of frustration. _“Fuck!”_

Kyungsoo was up, crossing the room in quick strides, by Jongin’s side. He smelled like the gym and the actor’s nose momentarily wrinkled. “What’s wrong? She’s gone, Nini, she’s gone.”

He did not expect the sardonic laugh that erupted from the model. “ _Gone_? I’ll never be rid of her. Certainly not now. Now she’s got something. I’m so sorry, hyung. I never... I wanted you to at least be protected by the outside world.” He gave another laugh and detached himself from Kyungsoo’s arms, crossing the suite to the bathroom and locking the door behind himself. Kyungsoo heard the water start running.

 _From the outside world?_ It seemed like Jongin was the one who needed—asked for, even—the protection. Kyungsoo shook his head and moved back to the couch, to a real movie. They’d figure it out. They had time and they had love.

***

It took Jongin a moment to recognize him even though he was looking for him; even though he’d seen him already. He lounged in the corner of the restaurant, in a booth, shrouded in relative shadow. Jongin felt a smile creep onto his face. Where he would’ve sat.

He crossed quickly to the man, putting a hand on his shoulder and holding in a laugh when Yixing didn’t bat an eye, just turned with smiling eyes. “Jonginnie!” And then he was up, and somehow they were embracing. And Jongin was saying “Lay! Lay, brother!” and they were pounding each other on the back until they finally broke apart so as not to cause too much of a commotion.

He slid into the booth next to Yixing, noting quickly with surprise and respect that he must’ve ordered Jongin a coffee the moment he’d entered the restaurant; here a waitress came now with a cup tinkling in her hand. “How’ve you been, man?” He’d forgotten Lay’s voice, the high thread in it like it had just tumbled down from heaven. It had always helped the boy in a bind.

“I’ve been... oh, up and down,” Jongin replied abashedly, looking from Yixing to his cup and back. _Yixing. This is Yixing._ “Recently got back from Paris.”

“ _Paris_!”

“Why are you so surprised?”

“Because less than ten years ago we didn’t know anything more than Seoul—barely Gangnam and its surrounding neighborhoods!” Yixing was grinning proudly. “You’ve been more places than I’ve been, for sure.”

“Well.” Jongin’s face heated and he couldn’t get rid of his smile. “I’m sure if you put your mind to it, you know—I always liked Seoul best anyway, feels like home, Korea that is...”

“Yes of course. It’s what we are. Never good to stray too far from what you are. Gets you all unmoored and shit.” Yixing leaned languidly back in the booth. Jongin’s smile faltered. _Yes. Don’t stray too far._

“What about you?” He asked, his bright mood not yet gone.

“Me? Well, you saw me with Kyungsoo. That’s just boring stuff. You could say I found what we were looking for, back when we were just breaking windows and painting walls.” Yixing chuckled.

“What, you found the mob?”

“Hey hey, first of all, we like to pretend we’re clandestine. Also, it’s a little more refined than _that_. It’s more like a brotherhood. Remember that night after Thanksgiving when we drank enough to throw up then jumped old Yuhyun’s fence? You pissed on his mercedes, I think.”

“No, that was Timoteo,” Jongin replied, grinning at the memory. “I stole the chain that hung from the rearview mirror—it was a heart, or a dreamcatcher, or some sappy shit. I thought it was so funny.”

Yixing was laughing and it took him a second to come down. Once he quieted down, he said, “Kim Jongin, as I live and breathe. We probably came so close to seeing each other so many times, man. Ahh, you should join up! It could be like the old days!”

Jongin felt his chest tingle and he took a sip of coffee. It went down hot and he felt its progress down his esophagus. “Lay, you know I have a job now.”

“Fuck, it’s been so long since someone called me that.” Yixing sighed, playing with the edge of his coffee cup with the tip of his fingers. “You should really call me Yixing, though. It’s my real name. Listen, you can still model. This isn’t a full time thing. It’s a however-much-you-want thing. You’re a solid guy, Jongin. The kind who could handle my work.”

“How would you know?” Jongin raised an eyebrow. “The adult world is darker and more dangerous than the adolescent world... _Yixing._ ”

“Well, I know because you just told me. Such sageness doesn’t come from green little twigs.” Yixing licked his lips and avoided Jongin’s eyes. “I also know a guy named Minseok...” Jongin stiffened. “Look, I’m not trying anything funny here. You’re my friend, Jongin. I believe that, it’s been years, but I believe that.” Yixing turned to look at him. Jongin felt acid in his mouth. The finite compartment in which Minseok and Luhan had resided began to disintegrate. “There was someone checked into the hospital, a subpoena, a settlement... and then, well, I know a guy named Luhan. _He’s_ a talker. But if you know what’s what—and that’s why I’m talking like this, man—you’ll say you don’t know anything about any of that.”

“I don’t know anything about any of that,” Jongin said tightly.

“Good man. I’ll meet you tomorrow—”

“But I’m not _like_ that anymore,” Jongin ground out. “Lay—Yixing—that isn’t what I was looking for and I’m not _like_ that. I’ve settled a little. I don’t...” _stay out late trading stranger’s mouth for stranger’s dick like it’s all interchangeable. Breaking hearts like you probably break bones. I’m not like that anymore._ But he questioned.

“You’ve still got the experience. You think I can’t sense the edge when I see it?” Yixing’s eyes glinted from his booth, appraising. “The hardness?”

“This is blackmail,” Jongin seethed, “ _not_ brotherhood.”

“Jongin. It _is_ brotherhood. One can melt into the other. This is just how it is. Jongin, look at me.” Jongin looked. Yixing seemed sober, serious in his next words. “I’m really glad I found you, and I’m even glad I have to recruit you, however selfish that is. We... we were brothers once. I...”

In him, Jongin saw a loneliness he’d experienced not too long ago, a loneliness that if endured for too long threatened to bring madness crawling on the edges of the mind. Part of him ached for his old friend, but part of him shouted, _I’m not like that anymore!_ But he questioned.

The low murmur of conversation was suddenly annoying. Jongin’s cup of coffee was almost gone and there was nothing more keeping him here. Yixing would surely find him when he needed him and he didn’t want to wait for the gangster to contrive a future meeting between them. Better to leave him caught up in his wistfulness here. The model stood up abruptly, shrugging on his coat with a sweeping, graceful motion.

“It was good seeing you, Jongin,” Yixing offered.

Jongin turned back, looked at the man of corded muscle before him. “It was good seeing you too,” he muttered. “Lay.” And he bid goodbye to the name. This man no longer bore that carefree title.

***

Jongin decided to walk a little bit before going back to the hotel. Kyungsoo would be home soon, no doubt making noodles or soup and it would smell delicious when Jongin stepped through the door. No, he needed the biting cold now. He needed to sort his compartments, smooth himself back out. It was clear Yixing knew everything: about Jongin’s seduction of Luhan, about the ghosting, Luhan catching him with Minseok, the attempted suicide. Where a chunk of his paycheck went every month.

So he was stuck there. Jongin’s thoughts turned to Kyungsoo.   _I was just surprised you weren’t more indignant. Offended. Furious. Disposed to retribution and revenge. They recruited you?_ He remembered his past anger at Kyungsoo, felt it still shifting within himself. Someone had killed Kyungsoo’s parents and no one knew why or who.

But Yixing was a step toward whoever it was.

 _I trust your discretion._ Jongin extended his arm to call a cab and escape the cold. A plan was beginning to brew in his mind.

***

“Let’s go outside.” About a week later, Kyungsoo’s voice had gotten smokier and quieter as the night had gotten later and they’d worked their way most of the way through an expensive glass of wine.

Jongin looked up from slipping Jjangah a piece of meat. “Outside? It’s freezing!”

“That’s what coats are for.” Kyungsoo stood, determined. Jongin shrugged and followed him to get coats and a blanket, following the actor out onto the balcony. Below them, the city stretched frozen and still and dark.

“Are you going to tell me why we’re acting like madmen?”

“Oh, please.” Kyungsoo lowered himself to the ground so he could dangle his legs off the edge into concrete nothingness, his face pressing between the iron bars of the railing. “You’ve done worse. Sitting outside a church for God only knows how long.”

Jongin chuckled, sitting down next to him. “He does, indeed.” They spread a blanket—a gift from Dahyun, working on commercials in the south—across themselves.

“You don’t smoke anymore,” Kyungsoo said quietly, drawing his coat around him against the pervasive cold. “It’s nice except I can’t admire you from afar anymore. I have to watch you from across the dinner table and then you know I’m watching you. It’s not the same.”

“You’re inviting me out here to look at me?” Jongin grinned. “You know, I don’t find that so strange. I _am_ a model, you know. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel lit a little every once in awhile. Ow!” He rubbed the spot on his arm where Kyungsoo had lightly punched him.

“I also...” Kyungsoo swallowed. Their words, as they said them, seemed to sink straight into the blackness, overshooting the lights of the city entirely and sailing up to the inky heavens.

“Yes, jagi?”

“Oh, shut up with the jagi.”

“Jagi jagi jagi jagi jagi jagi. Ow!”

“Jongin.” Kyungsoo licked his lips. “We have so much to talk about. You must know.”

“Yes, so much to talk about,” Jongin agreed, feigning solemnity. “And to worry about and to dream about. How about this: did you know that Baekhyun, that guy who we played poker with, went through a very gay phase a while ago? How do you feel about the fact that there are cameras everywhere in our lives? We’ve never talked about that before.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.” Kyungsoo looked down at his hands. They were calloused despite, or perhaps because of, his profession. “Maybe you’re not in the right mood, anyway.”

“They seem trivial, right? These things. Compared to what weighs on us. But we can’t let them be trivial, Kyungsoo, because they aren’t trivial to other people, _innocent_ people, and we’ve got to hold onto that. It’s part of what holds the monsters at bay. After all, they’re just words, too. The monsters. It’s just a way of naming those things inside us which scare us. Names make them less scary.” Jongin shivered.

Kyungsoo looked over at the model, at the orangey glow of the city across the planes of his face. Wondered at the contents of the brain behind the beautiful face. “Names,” he repeated. And Jongin nodded with a faraway look. Then he said: “I don’t have nightmares so much anymore.”

“That’s good.” Jongin turned dark, caring eyes on him. “Do you dream?”

“Do I dream? Of course I dream, Nini.”

“Yes but... well, I don’t have nightmares exactly. I have the strangest dreams.” Jongin shuffled in place until he could rest his head on Kyungsoo’s shoulder. “Sometimes they have cameras.”

Kyungsoo chuckled. “You and I both know we don’t give a shit about the cameras. They’re par for the course. You can’t possibly be angsty about that.”

He felt Jongin smiling beside him. “No.” Jongin’s voice was that deep, rich honey Kyungsoo would never forget, not if he lived again. Kyungsoo leaned back on his hands and sighed. The cold air felt good on his lungs. He began to hum.

He hummed until he felt steady breathing from Jongin. Then he let words pervade the space around him.

**_“_ ** _I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself,_

_and was gone: my soul failed when he spake:_

_I sought him, but I could not find him;_

_I called him, but he gave me no answer.”_

_***_

author's note: I am so so so so so sorry about the inexcusably long hiatus! I've simply had finals and been working on other things and as a way of making it up to you I gave you fluff—didn't even write any dick into this chapter. I'm so sorry. Hopefully, at least, in its briefness, this chapter answers some of your questions?? Thank you for sticking with me and with this fic if you did. I shall try to update again much sooner than this one came.

as always, I adore **comments**  and subscriptions <3


End file.
